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Let’s be practical

As I thought I might be giving a talk this week about the Balkans, I prepared the following text, which I would not want to see go unused. So here are my latest, but not very new, thoughts about the Balkans:

The Balkans are a region that produces more history than it can consume but also generates less future than its people would like.

There are two places that still merit attention in Washington. One is Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the state created at Dayton in 1995 is facing a serious partition challenge from Republika Srpska, its Serb-dominated half. The other is Kosovo, where a similar challenge arises from Serbia’s desire to hold on to the northern 11% of the country.

These are the last territorial issues in the Balkans, a region once wracked by ethnic claims. Either one might, if mishandled, generate instability and ethnic conflict, vitiating 15 years of progress. Not only Bosnia and Kosovo might be affected, but also Macedonia and Serbia, which has Muslim and Albanian-majority areas that will want whatever the Serbs get in Bosnia or Kosovo. We need to ensure that Pandora’s box remains closed.

That reassurance can no longer come only from the United States. Today, the European Union holds most of the leverage in the Balkans. The prospect of EU membership—now ensured for Croatia and not too far off for Montenegro—has become a major incentive for Balkan reform, where otherwise there is an inclination towards ethno-territorial breakdown.

We need the Europeans to secure stability in the Balkans, but they also need us. American-led interventions ended the Bosnian war as well as Yugoslav repression in Kosovo. Nowhere are Americans more appreciated than among Bosnian Muslims and Kosovars.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Let’s start with Bosnia. In the first 10 years after the Dayton agreements were signed, it made good progress with a lot of international tutelage. But Bosnia has stalled for the past five years, since rejection in 2006 of the April package of constitutional amendments. They failed to reach a two-thirds majority in the Bosnian parliament by just two votes. It was a setback from which Bosnia has still not recovered.

Since then, Milorad Dodik, now president of the Serb-controlled 49% of Bosnia, has set course to make his Serb entity as autonomous as possible, denying the validity of decisions by the internationally designated High Representative and challenging the authority of Sarajevo-based governing institutions and courts. His stated goal is independence for Republika Srpska, even if he has often stepped back from irreversible steps in that direction.  It is not an accident that Dodik has also been predicting that EU membership for Bosnia is 50 years in the future.

We need to recognize that Dodik is serious. His strategy is to maximize the separation of Republika Srpska from the Bosnian state so that he can, if political conditions ever permit, achieve independence in the future. This is essentially the same strategy that was pursued successfully by Milo Djukanovic in Montenegro, which became independent in 2006.

There is, however, a big difference between Montenegro and Republika Srpska, whose population today is overwhelmingly Serb because of an aggressive ethnic cleansing campaign during the Bosnian war. Montenegro gained the support of all but its Serb minority for independence and conducted a referendum under strict supervision of the international community. Dodik has no intention of allowing the return to Republika Srpska of its pre-war Muslim plurality. To the contrary, the RS is unwelcoming to Croat and Muslim returnees and maintains an atmosphere hostile to non-Serbs in its schools, press, governing institutions and social life. Ratko Mladic, now on trial in The Hague for genocide and crimes against humanity, is still a hero in Republika Srpska, which is funding his defense.

There is another difference in Bosnia:  secession of Republika Srpska would lead quickly to secession of at least some Croat-majority areas of Bosnia, leaving in central Bosnia the “green garden”:  a non-viable, rump Islamic state.  Neither Zagreb nor Belgrade would want to see the green garden planted in their midst, and it is hard to picture the Americans or Europeans liking the idea either.  Avoiding this outcome was a major motive for the Americans in supporting a united Bosnia in the 1990s; it is no less important in 2011.

If ever there is a referendum in Bosnia, it should be conducted in the entire country on a serious proposition:  do you want to live in a Bosnia that can qualify to become a member of the European Union?  I have no doubt at all that such a proposition would pass with a strong majority and silence most talk of secession.

The European Union approach to this problem has been accommodation. Dodik this spring scheduled a contentious referendum on the Bosnian court system and the High Representative that would have set a precedent for an independence referendum. The High Representative was prepared to annul the legal arrangements for the voting, something he can do as the referendum violated the Dayton agreements. Instead, the European Union, without telling the Americans, arranged to accommodate Dodik’s demand for discussions on the Bosnian court system, without consulting the Bosnian government.

I have rarely seen American diplomats more outraged, though they have largely kept their fury out of the public eye. Blind-siding the Americans—actually it is usually called sand-bagging in the bureaucratic world—no doubt gave Dodik a great deal of satisfaction, as it meant that the European Union came to him and met his demand for discussion of institutions belonging to the Bosnian state, without representatives of that state present.

So what we are seeing in Bosnia is obvious deterioration of the international consensus on how to handle Dodik’s determined and consistent efforts to gain the kind of autonomy that will make independence some day in the future possible.

Kosovo

I am pleased that we are not seeing the same thing in dealing with Kosovo, where the EU has been leading a dialogue effort between Belgrade and Pristina intended to resolve practical problems that would improve life for both Serbs and Albanians. Robert Cooper, who has led this effort on behalf of Brussels, has kept the Americans at the table and in the loop.

The dialogue has now produced its first modest results: agreements on mutual recognition of documents and license plates as well as provision by Serbia to Kosovo of copies of official records taken at the end of the NATO/Yugoslavia war. Other more far-reaching agreements are thought to be imminent. This illustrates clearly what can be achieved when the Americans and Europeans act together.

There is still, however, a long way to go. Belgrade has said it will never recognize an independent Kosovo, which is not a problem so long as it eventually lifts the Russian veto on its membership in the UN General Assembly. This it will have to do before Serbia can enter the EU, which will not want to accept a new Cyprus-like divided member. In fact, Serbia is under pressure to specify sooner rather than later on what territory it intends to apply EU laws and regulations—the acquis communitaire. It hopes to hold on to at least the part of Kosovo north of the Ibar river, which is contiguous with Serbia and is still governed by Belgrade. If it specifies all or part of Kosovo, Serbia won’t be taken seriously as a candidate for EU membership–it would be best if the EU can be convinced not to allow it candidacy status until it settles the issue of the north with Pristina.

The Serbian political leadership, even its more forward-looking and pro-European president Boris Tadic, has painted itself into a corner on Kosovo issues. Belgrade refuses to meet with Pristina officials who are clearly identified as such.  It needs to find its own way out of this cul-de-sac. I would suggest it work along this path: recognition not of Kosovo’s independence, but of the legitimacy of the Kosovo’s democratic institutions, with whose representatives it has already reached limited agreements.

Pristina could help this process if President Atifete Jahjaga would invite Tadic to visit Kosovo’s capital and pay a courtesy call. If he refuses, he embarrasses himself: why wouldn’t he call on the democratically legitimized president of a territory he claims is part of Serbia? If he accepts, we get past a silly hurdle that the Serbs have erected for themselves.

The American role

What is the American role in all of this? We need to do what we can to complete the state-building process in Bosnia and Kosovo so that American troops and civilians can turn their attention to more pressing matters.

Here are my relatively few recommendations for what the United States should still do in the Balkans:

1. Working with the EU, get Serbia to tell RS it will never be independent or part of Serbia and that Dodik needs to turn his attention to strengthening the Bosnian state so that it can become an EU member.

2. Urge Pristina to invite Tadic to visit.

3. In a joint statement with the EU, declare that Kosovo and Bosnia will not be divided and can only hope to enter the EU as states within their well-established borders.

Even the five members of the EU that have not recognized Kosovo’s sovereignty can, I believe, acknowledge that its independence will not be reversed and that partition of either Bosnia or Kosovo is a bad idea. If we expect Belgrade to be practical, we should expect ourselves to be practical as well.

Here’s an idea for Bosnia

Balkans fans will know that Brčko, a northeast Bosnian town, became the knot that couldn’t be untied at Dayton and was therefore referred for arbitration thereafter.  The result was an unusual decision in favor of a “condominium”–Brčko became legally part of both the Federation and Republika Srpska and de facto distinct from both, under international (American) supervision. Adam Moore of UCLA has written an interesting paper on the post-war evolution of Brčko, which has become a rare but fraying exemplar of reintegration in Bosnia:  Why Brčko became one of the only success stories in Bosnia.

Those who worry about war in Bosnia worry about Brčko.  It is vital to Republika Srpska (RS), since it sits in a narrow corridor that joins the eastern wing along the Drina with its western wing south of the Sava.  If ever there is a war in Bosnia again, whoever gets Brčko wins:  the RS needs it to survive intact, the Federation needs it to make RS independence impossible.

So protecting Brčko and preventing it from being “taken” by either the RS or the Federation should be a priority for the international community.  The European force (EUFOR) in Bosnia has limited resources (1600 people “in theater,” whatever that means).  Its mission is

…to provide a military presence in order to contribute to the safe and secure environment, deny conditions for a resumption of violence, manage any residual aspect of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in BiH (also known as Dayton/Paris Agreement).

It could pre-emptively begin to concentrate itself in Brčko (in addition to its near-Sarajevo headquarters), thereby providing a serious impediment to RS’s independence ambitions as well as to any pre-emptive move by the Bosniaks to prevent secession. Doing this would help to preserve the still integrated Brčko district and prevent it from fraying further.

A European move to strengthen its heretofore modest liaison and observation team in Brčko would demonstrate to all concerned–including the Americans–that EUFOR is serious and knows where Bosnia’s vulnerabilities lie.

Pandora’s box should stay closed

Thursday I offered a few pleasant surprises from my visit to Kosovo, but with no firm conclusions on the vital issue of whether rule of law could or would prevail there. Today the other shoe drops: I have to offer a pessimistic view on where current political trends are leading. Ironic though it may be as Albania struggles with its own problems, the idea of greater Albania is gaining in Kosovo, largely due to failures in international policy.

Kosovo, now nominally independent for more than three years, lives with multiple limitations on its sovereignty: NATO (rather than its own security forces) guarantees its defense, the EU monitors its justice system and provides prosecutors and judges in cases of interethnic and organized crime, its budget is monitored by the International Monetary Fund, and its monetary policy is determined by the European Central Bank (since it uses the euro, not its own currency). In addition, there are of course any number of additional restrictions and conditions that donors impose on specific development and governance projects.

Few chafe much at these restrictions, though the prime minister did recently fulfill a campaign promise to raise public sector salaries in defiance of the IMF, precipitating a withdrawal of IMF budget support that will require his government either to cut back or fill the gap. “Self-Determination,” an opposition political party led by firebrand Albin Kurti, has gained something under 13% of the voting public with cries of resistance to limitations on sovereignty. For the moment he is a relatively small factor in the parliamentary equation, but with obvious potential for growth.

Belgrade’s control of northern Kosovo (three and a half municipalities north of the Ibar river) is rousing more serious problems. As demonstrated in a recent report from the Coordinator’s Office for Strategy Regarding the North of Kosovo (I’ve posted it here), Serbia has established a full array of its institutions in the north, with the obvious intention of holding on to the territory it controls there in any negotiated settlement of Kosovo’s status.

For Brussels and Washington, the talks begun late last year between Pristina and Belgrade on “practical” problems are not supposed to touch on the status issue, which the United States and 22 out of 27 members of the EU regard as settled. But few in Pristina (or I suspect Belgrade) think either Brussels or Washington shows anything like the fortitude needed to undo Belgrade’s growing domination of the north.

There are a number of practical ways in which the current division of Kosovo might be softened, and it is my understanding that these are being discussed in the EU-sponsored talks between Pristina and Belgrade. If agreement can be reached on electricity supplies and telecommunications services in the north, it could help to reintegrate the Belgrade-controlled territory with the rest of Kosovo. Agreement on mutual recognition of documents, on recognition of Kosovo’s customs bureaucracy and on export of Kosovo made goods to Serbia would also help a good deal.

But I understand that Belgrade has asked for a postponement in the next session of the talks, when a number of these agreements were expected to be reached. We can hope that this is related to the Dutch parliament’s decision to postpone approval of an EU agreement with Serbia, pending certification of Belgrade’s full cooperation with the Hague Tribunal (Ratko Mladic is in The Hague, but he was one of two outstanding indictees).

That may not be the only reason for postponement. Belgrade may be having trouble accepting the already negotiated agreements because its political level has decided that the technical agreements make Serbia’s intention of dividing Kosovo more difficult. Belgrade yesterday indicated willingness to unilaterally accept Kosovo documents for travel in Serbia, which would be an important symbolic step, but one that has little relevance to the question of partition.

Judging from my discussions in Pristina last week, there is no question but that if Belgrade presses to divide Kosovo it will open a Pandora’s box of ethno-territorial issues, starting in the Albanian-majority areas of southern Serbia, extending to the Serb-majority areas of Bosnia and ending in the Muslim-populated areas of Serbia itself. Thursday Muslims of Bosnia and Sandjak (a region lying partly in Serbia and partly in Montenegro) established a “Bosniak Academy of Arts and Sciences,” no problem in of itself but a sign of growing ethnic nationalist sentiment.

Kosovars are showing a marked increase in interest in greater Albania, an historical ambition that was abandoned during the past decade in an implicit bargain with the international community: Kosovo gets independence and Albanians forget about all trying to live in one country, since eventually the borders that divide them will come down once the Balkans countries all enter the EU.

Why anyone would want to be part of an Albania that can’t even run a decent municipal election, and in which the chief political protagonists compete to see who can be more offensive and unreasonable, I don’t know. Kosovo seems to me to have a relatively good deal as an independent state under international tutelage, except in one important area: access to Europe.

Kosovars, unlike most other Balkan citizens, don’t have visa-free access to Europe’s “Schengen” area. This, and a “contractual” relationship with the EU (meaning one in which the EU can sign agreements with Kosovo, despite the five non-recognizing states), were supposed to come with completion of the first phase of the Belgrade/Pristina dialogue. If Belgrade is going to block completion of the first phase, it only seems right to me that Brussels should go ahead with its commitments to Pristina, provided Kosovo is prepared to maintain its commitments to the already negotiated agreements.

I also don’t know why anyone in Serbia would want the north: its Trepca mine likely isn’t worth much and requires facilities in the south, less than half the Serb population of Kosovo lives there, and all the important Serb monuments, churches and monasteries are farther south. And if Trepca is the issue, as one of the commenters on a previous post claims, some sort of division of the spoils from the mine can likely be negotiated.

There is little accounting for nationalist aspirations in the Balkans. Best to keep Pandora’s box firmly closed. That will require a willingness on the part of the Washington and Brussels to confront Belgrade’s territorial ambitions in northern Kosovo, relegating them to the oblivion in which they belong. The time is coming to end Belgrade’s hopes for partition of Kosovo, and to recognize that Serbs, too, will one day see the borders between them fall as the Balkans countries enter the EU.

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.