Vucic receives mandate to form government (RTS/Beta/Tanjug)
Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic has assigned the leader of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) Aleksandar Vucic with the mandate of forming the new government. “I sincerely congratulate Vucic on the result he has achieved and I decided to inform the parliament that I have entrusted Vucic with the mandate, but honestly speaking, I would not be in his shoes, as Serbia is facing serious challenges,” Nikolic told a press conference after meeting with the SNS leader. “Joy and happiness ended on the day the votes were counted – today marks the beginning of huge responsibility and work under constant public scrutiny, and many will look and wait for government’s mistakes. We agreed to share the responsibility and the government and the president will work very closely. We will work like a team, particularly concerning the moves that will not be popular,” the Serbian President said.
Vulin: If expelled do not vote, Serbs will not approach elections (Novosti)
The Serbs are unified in the stance that is it unacceptable to deny the right of vote for the displaced persons and the reserved seats in the assembly, and my position is that the Serbs should not approach the general elections in Kosovo if their demands are not realized, outgoing Serbian Minister in charge of Kosovo and Metohija Aleksandar Vulin told Novosti. He has assessed as sad that it took 15 years before the founding of the special court for the crimes committed in the province, and that nobody felt the need to at least count the Serb victims.
Serbia opposes reduction of EULEX members and KFOR troops (RTS)
Serbia is opposing a reduction in the number of EULEX members and KFOR troops, outgoing Serbian Minister in charge of Kosovo and Metohija Aleksandar Vulin has said. EULEX and KFOR must ensure security for Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija, and that is why Serbia is against a drop in the number of their members, Vulin said. “At the moment, Djakovica citizens cannot go to Djakovica and light candles at tombs, which is unacceptable,” Vulin told reporters in Novi Sad, stressing that the international community carries the greatest responsible for the security of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija. Upon the decision of Pristina authorities, the Serbs that have been displaced from Djakovica could not visit their hometown, south-western Kosovo and Metohija, on Good Friday. On the occasion of the first anniversary of the Brussels agreement on 19 April, Vulin said that the Serbian side had done everything that had been required of it. Together with Novi Sad Mayor, Vulin welcomed to the Novi Sad City Hall the pupils from Gorazdevac, western Kosovo and Metohija, who are spending their Easter holidays in Vojvodina.
Irinej: Kosovo and Metohija can never be outside Serbia (Novosti)
Serbian Patriarch Irinej has voiced hope that Serbia and the Serbian government would never make any gesture that could lead to giving up on the southern Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija. “The Serbian people will never accept that. Our history, culture and spirituality are closely linked to that area,” the Serbian Patriarch said in an interview to Novosti. Asked about a possible change to the Constitution, Irinej says that he does not know what the purpose of the change of the Constitution would be, or whether that would happen, but regardless of whether the supreme law of the land would be amended and to what extent, Kosovo and Metohija must not be separated from Serbia. “If something like that happened, that would be an eternal bone of contention between us and our neighbors, which would benefit no one. The Serbian people will never give up on its religious centers- Decani, Gracanica, Our Lady of Ljevis,” the Patriarch said. He expressed hope that Serbia would do everything in its power to ensure the return of the property in Kosovo and Metohija to the Serbian Orthodox Church, underscoring that he also expects Europe’s support for that.
Dikovic: Possible participation in another eight UN and EU missions (Odbrana)
Chief of the Serbian Army general staff Ljubisa Dikovic has stated there is possibility of the members of the armed forces taking part in another eight multi-national operations – seven under the command of the UN and one by the EU. Those include the West Sahara, Mali, Indian state Jammu and Kashmir, South Sudan and two each in Sudan and Near East, Dikovic told Odbrana magazine. He has added that in 2014 the engagement of 500 members of the Serbian Army in nine missions is envisaged – nine under the mandate of the UN and three under the EU.
REGIONAL PRESS
Izetbegovic: Official invitation to Vucic as soon as he becomes prime minister (Klix.ba)
The Chair of the B&H Presidency Bakir Izetbegovic has announced that he will officially invite the future Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic to Sarajevo when the leader of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) assumes the prime minister post. “We must create better relations in the Balkans. Vucic is a supported and influential politician, I think that the way he has been working and speaking over the past years is acceptable for us and has perspective. I said I would cooperate with him,” Izetbegovic told Klix.ba.
Izetbegovic: HR’s passivity encouraged RS government’s unconstitutional moves (Oslobodjenje)
The High Representative (HR) should react to the decision by the Rerpublika Srpska (RS) government to verify the accuracy and truthfulness of data in determining residency in that B&H entity, the Chair of the B&H Presidency Bakir Izetbegovic, member of the B&H Presidency Zeljko Komsic, and B&H Foreign Minister Zlatko Lagumdzija told a press conference in Sarajevo. “I expect that the High Representative will finally act and start to respond to such things. I think that his passivity to some degree even encouraged going into things that are both unconstitutional and illegal and contrary to Annex 7 of the Dayton Accord,” said Izetbegovic. He called on authorities in the RS not to pass such decisions, the police not to enact such decisions, and returnees to maintain the law. “Let them show just what is obliged by state law, and that is an ID card, some identifying document – all else is not necessary to show,” said Izetbegovic. Komsic said that this decision did not surprise him, because he believes that the RS government and authorities in that entity will do everything to prevent the registration of returnees. Lagumdzija said it is clear that this is about destroying Dayton and the constitutional responsibilities, and that the law on residency is exclusively at state jurisdiction. “By the same logic, the state parliament could adopt a law on primary and secondary education and ignore the cantons and entities. However, this would not be in accordance with the Constitution,” explained Lagumdzija. He added that it is perfectly clear that this law has no legal basis. “I hope that the High Representative will recognize what this is about, because I fear that we are entering an atmosphere in which practically everything will be permissible, or that the Constitution will be thrown under foot, and that means throwing the Dayton Peace Accord under foot,” said Lagumdzija, commenting on the RS government’s decision to verify accuracy and truthfulness of data in establishing residency on the territory of Republika Srpska, in which it is stated that it is premature until the law regulating this field is adopted.
Dodik: Interventionism by the OHR will not be accepted (Srna)
The call to the Office of the High Representative (OHR) to intervene regarding the decision of the RS cabinet which deals with the issue of permanent residence shows the powerlessness of the Bosniak member of the B&H Presidency Bakir Izetbegovic and his wish for interventionism, which we will not accept, the RS President Milorad Dodik told Srna. Dodik, who is also the leader of the SNSD, said that the legally elected representatives of the RS will never accept any decision of the OHR which would alter or suspend any decision legally brought by the RS bodies. “We will remain an immature party, as Izetbegovic calls us, and we will never be a desirable and acceptable partner for him, such as the SDS is, of which Izetbegovic speaks with open sympathy,” Dodik said, commenting on the call by Izetbegovic to the OHR to react to the decision of the RS cabinet to verify data on permanent residence in the RS. Dodik said it seems that Bakir Izetbegovic still reads only the book written by his father Alija Izetbegovic – The Islamic Declaration. “Therefore, the divisions he is making into those parties from the RS which are mature – as they, in his opinion, would agree to a state as described in the book of Izetbegovic senior – and those which are not, like the SNSD – which is fighting against the state from the favorable book of Bakir Izetbegovic – are no surprise at all,” Dodik said. He said that Izetbegovic is by his empty rhetoric avoiding the question of why he and his party, the SDA, blocked in the B&H House of Peoples the passage of a bill on permanent and temporary residence which passed the B&H Council of Ministers and the House of Representatives. “Why is he against the Europeanization of anything in B&H, including the regulating of this area through a law which takes into account all European practices? It is obvious that a state as described in the Islamic Declaration is still Izetbegovic’s political goal, and that Europe and European integration are just a cover for creating an Islamic state, about which father and son Izetbegovic dreamed and for which they fought,” Dodik said. Regarding Izetbegovic’s claims that the story of a referendum on independence for the RS will “disappear” after the October elections, Dodik said that Izetbegovic spoke the same after the last elections. “The story of a referendum on independence for the RS will stop the day we conduct it. I hope that by then, Izetbegovic also will get used to this fact,” Dodik said.
INTERNATIONAL PRESS
KLA war crimes hearings to begin in the Netherlands (The Irish Times, by Peter Cluskey, 21 April 2014)
A new international court, funded by the European Union, is expected to begin hearings in the Netherlands as early as next year exclusively to try crimes allegedly committed by Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian rebels during their war with Serbia in 1998 and 1999.
The court is expected to cost in the region of €170 million to set up, but its running costs and the length of time it will need to remain in existence will be impossible to calculate until it begins its work and issues its initial indictments, all in a difficult domestic political climate.
The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) rebels had the backing of NATO during the war in which some 10,000 people were killed and 300,000 displaced. It was brought to an end by a campaign of allied air strikes, the first ever launched without the approval of the UN Security Council.
The rebels emerged from the conflict as national heroes. Their former political chief, Hashim Thaci, was elected first prime minister of a newly independent Kosovo in 2008, and described at one point by US Vice-President, Joe Biden, as “the George Washington of Kosovo”.
But as the sickening extent of the bloodshed committed by all sides in the Yugoslav wars began to emerge, the KLA too was accused of atrocities – specifically of trucking prisoners across the border to secret torture camps in Albania, and most notoriously of trafficking in the organs of dead Serbs.
One regular visitor, Louise Arbour, then chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), set up in The Hague in 1999, famously described Kosovo in the aftermath of the war as “one vast crime scene”.
Chilling terms
In similarly chilling terms, forensic anthropologist, Jose Pablo Baraybar, head of the UN’s Office of Missing Persons and Forensics, and a veteran of Srebrenica, said the discovery of so many mass graves made it “one of the most exhumed places on earth”.
Even so – and despite huge advances in DNA technology – almost 2,000 people remain missing today.
The problem, as ever, is evidence. Many Kosovars, maintain their accusers, have embraced a “taboo of silence”. Supporters of the former KLA say that’s absurd: a war supported by the international community 15 years ago is now needlessly “being put on trial”.
One way or another, investigators say prosecutions to date have been hindered by intimidation of potential witnesses and their families.
So the fact that the West is now planning a new tribunal focused on Kosovo alone is widely regarded not as a victory for justice, but rather as a belated admission that it has so far signally failed to hold its former allies to account.
The EU-backed court will have its symbolic seat in Kosovo. But in fact all its key work, including hearing witness testimony, will take place in The Hague – where a complex but low-key security presence already protects five separate courts and their staff, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the ICTY, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.
In terms of the mechanics of setting up such a large legal organisation, that “distance” from Kosovo is regarded as crucial to its success – yet is must be regarded as having the same legitimacy as a domestic court.
“We asked for a court comprised only of international judges and an appeals panel comprised only of internationals,” one EU official involved in the preparations told the Associated Press news agency. “This must be done and it must be done abroad. That is the only way to maintain credibility.”
Lawyers with considerable experience of The Hague’s tribunals agree. “Where intimidation is a serious issue, having local judges is just too hard for all concerned, including the judges’ families still living in the countries in question,” one told The Irish Times.
US Ambassador to Kosovo, Tracey Ann Jacobson, summed up the diplomatic balancing act involved in the negotiations. “The proposal is for the creation of a Kosovo court implementing Kosovo law, staffed with international judges, with both an internal seat in Kosovo and an external seat.”
The basis of any indictments brought before the new court will be a two-year-long investigation on behalf of the EU, led by American prosecutor, John Clint Williamson, whose team is due to complete its work in mid-June.
The new court will draft its own internal procedures, using Kosovo law, the penal code of the now-defunct Yugoslavia where appropriate, as well as UN legal documents promulgated while Kosovo was under United Nations control.
The head of the EU delegation in Pristina, Samuel Zbogar, said he understood that many in Kosovo feared the damage the new court’s revelations might do to the country’s image. “I would argue the contrary: that clarifying these accusations will remove a dark cloud . . . and show a country with the courage to trust in the rule of law and justice.”
In Kosovo’s capital, new mayor fights corruption – by doing his job (Christian Science Monitor, by Kristen Chick, 21 April 2014)
Pristina’s mayor, Shpend Ahmeti, has earned plaudits – and death threats – by investigating corruption, making hiring transparent, and even selling the posh mayoral car
The former mayor of Pristina drove to work every day in a 75,000-euro ($100,000) luxury car. But after Shpend Ahmeti pulled off an electoral upset on the back of promises to improve services and expunge the corruption rampant in the Kosovo capital, he decided to shake things up by simply doing his job.
So the young, Harvard-educated Mr. Ahmeti, soon after his election, sold the car. He now rides the 7 a.m. bus to his office.
Only months into his four-year term, it’s too early to judge how successful Ahmeti will be. But in a country where politicians often amass expensive homes and flashy cars while education and healthcare suffer and unemployment tops 30 percent, some Pristina residents say Ahmeti has inspired them to believe, for the first time, that change is possible.
“He gave me so much hope,” says Nora Ahmetaj, head of the Center for Research, Documentation, and Publication, which focuses on transitional justice issues in Kosovo. On the day of his victory, she says, “I didn’t remember such happiness since June 1999 when NATO entered Kosovo.”
‘Setting the tone’
Ahmeti completed a master’s degree in public policy at Harvard, has worked for the World Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, started a think tank, and taught at the American University in Kosovo. But he says politics is the work he truly loves.
“It’s the calling that I like the most because you can influence things, you can fight for things. The things you believe in you can put into practice,” he says. “People should get involved in politics so we don’t leave politics only to corrupt politicians, but actually make a change.”
Since he took office in late December, he’s been busy. He put a stop to illegal building in the capital, a pervasive problem linked to what local newspapers call a “construction mafia.” He filled vacancies in the education department by following a transparent process to interview applicants and hire those most qualified – breaking from past nepotism. And he canceled a contract with one of Kosovo’s largest petrol companies after discovering it was fraudulently selling the city harmful heating fuel for schools.
Ahmeti holds 8 to 10 meetings a day with average citizens to hear their requests or complaints, and his administration has spent time digging into the workings of the municipality to flush out corruption. So far, he says, he’s sent more than 50 cases, most involving apparent illegal building and some about apparent illegal property transfers by the city, to a prosecutor for investigation.
He has also made promises to improve education and healthcare, and to end the water cuts that plague the capital – something many doubt he will be able to achieve amid a historic drought.
But he expects voters to hold him accountable: Taking a cue from former Washington, D.C., Mayor Anthony Williams, Ahmeti’s campaign printed his pledges on small “scorecards” for residents to keep in their wallets to weigh his progress.
His biggest achievement so far, he says, is “setting the tone.” By following the law and being transparent, he hopes he will put pressure on other government officials and institutions to do the same.
“Obviously I can’t solve everything in Pristina. But if we can show an example that things can be done in a clean way, a transparent way, that not everyone in politics thinks of enriching himself, then I think it makes people think,” he says.
His work has not gone unnoticed. Ahmeti says police told him that people connected to construction companies had talked of an assassination attempt, but he doesn’t appear concerned. “When I ran for office, I didn’t think this was going to be an easy path,” he says.
Time will tell
Analysts take a wait-and-see approach to Ahmeti, offering some criticism of his beginnings while noting that time will tell whether he keeps his promises and is able to make headway in a broken system.
Avni Zogiani, head of the anti-corruption organization Cohu, says Ahmeti shouldn’t be talking about the apparent corruption cases he’s uncovered until they’ve been investigated by prosecutors. Krenar Gashi, director of the Institute for Development Policy in Pristina, says Ahmeti may get too much credit at times, such as in the recent arrest of 10 people, including the city’s chief building inspector, on charges of corruption connected to illegal building. That investigation started before Ahmeti was elected, Mr. Gashi notes.
“These people were not arrested because Shpend became mayor. But I’m not sure they would be arrested if Shpend wasn’t mayor,” he says.
Ahmeti’s election, Gashi says, has proven to Pristina residents that one government employee doing his job properly can bring about change. “Because people were really getting hopeless in terms of changing things. People were hopeless about being able to win a government contract without paying bribes. I think this is the first turning point of that phenomenon.”
Whether Ahmeti’s victory will have an effect on upcoming national elections is less evident, say analysts. Ahmeti is a member of a small nationalist party, called Vetevendosje, or Self Determination, that was losing popularity before his election. Most analysts agree that Pristina residents voted for Ahmeti, not his party, when they elected him. He also benefited from a nationwide trend in which cities voted out incumbent mayors.
But some Pristina residents see his election as the beginning of something bigger. Bashkim Berisha didn’t believe that Ahmeti could even win, let alone effect change. But now Mr. Berisha has changed his mind, and will vote for Ahmeti’s party in national elections. “He’s going in a good direction and I do believe he will make change,” he says. “Kosovars deserve so much more than what they are getting. People want change.”
Those high expectations bring tremendous pressure to bear on Ahmeti, of which he is well aware. Mr. Zogiani, the anti-corruption activist, says if reform doesn’t go past Ahmeti, “I’m afraid these people who are being arrested will be in the streets again,” and “this sentiment of change will be lost.”
Serbia Socialists Face Deadline to Join Govt (BIRN, 21 April 2014)
The Socialist Party has to the end of the week to take up an invitation to join a new government in Serbia – without its pre-election partners, the Pensioners’ Party and United Serbia Party.
Time is running out for Ivica Dacic, leader of the Socialist Party, to decide on whether to sacrifice longtime pre-election deals with partner parties and join the new Progressive-led government.
Aleksandar Vucic, leader of the Progressive Party, which came top in the March 16 general election, has invited the Socialists to join the new cabinet – as long as they come alone.
According to Vucic, the new government is due to be formed by April 27.
“We are ready to help and are willing to be a part of a parliamentary majority,” Dacic said on Thursday.
However, the issue of what to do with the Pensioners’ Party has yet to be discussed at the Socialist party’s main board, likely to be held on Tuesday.
According to Dacic, the issue of the future names of ministers “was not discussed at all”, such as whether only he or somebody from the Socialists would join.
“It would be insulting to Serbs who mostly voted for the Progressives and their leader [Vucic] if the Socialists were to now give him ultimatums,” Dacic said. “We do not have conversations in that kind of language,” he added.
The Progressive Party won 158 of 250 seats in parliament while the Socialists won 44. The two parties were coalition partners in the former government but split over economic reforms, as the Socialists felt obliged to deliver concessions on behalf of their Pensioners’ Party ally.
Dacic noted that the current consultations were different compared to some held in the past, “because it is already known that a parliamentary majority exists to form a government”.
The Socialist leader who also heads the current caretaker government said his party had “no reason to distance itself from any possible negative and unpopular moves that the [next] government will make.
“If we join the government, then it will be our shared responsibility,” he declared.
A ethnic minority party, the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians, which represents the country’s Hungarian community, is already on board for the new government.
Three Bosnian Croats arrested for wartime rape (P.M. News, 21 April 2014)
Three Bosnian Croats, suspected to have raped Serb women at the beginning of the 1992-95 inter-ethnic war in Bosnia, were arrested today, war crime prosecutors said.
The suspects, members of the Bosnian Croat armed forces during the war, were arrested in the northeastern region of Odzak, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
“They are suspected to have raped a number of victims, women of Serb nationality, between June and August 1992 in the region of Odzak,” the statement read.
“They are suspected to have committed war crimes against the civilian population,” it added, giving no further details.
According to a local association of Serb victims, Odzak 92, members of the Bosnian Croat forces raped some 60 women aged between 10 and 60 in early months of the conflict.
Two rape victims, who were 14 and 17 years old in 1992, criticised the impunity of perpetrators and demanded that they be brought to justice in an appeal in 2011.
For a long time after the war in Bosnia, cases of mass wartime rapes were given a low priority by investigators despite estimates that at least 20,000 women, mostly Muslims, were sexually assaulted during the conflict.
Up to now, only 33 people have been convicted for these crimes in Bosnia, along with 30 others at the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
Hollywood star Angelina Jolie last month chose Bosnia to launch her international appeal aimed at ending rape as a weapon of war.
Jolie dealt with war crimes and violence against women during Bosnia’s war in her 2011 directorial debut, “In the Land of Blood and Honey.”
War in Bosnia claimed some 100,000 lives and displaced two million people, almost half the country’s pre-war population.
Remember Bosnia? (National Interest, by Gordon N. Bardos, 21 April 2014)
Now that the smoke has cleared from what is being called the worst violence in Bosnia in the past nineteen years, it is worth taking stock of what actually happened, where international policy towards Bosnia has floundered, and what needs to be done down the road to stabilize both the country and the region as a whole.
First, to understand how absurd press coverage of Bosnia’s recent unrest has been, imagine the following news report, adjusted for an American context:
Protesters burned the White House, several state capitol buildings, and parts of the Library of Congress demanding the resignation of government officials at all levels of government and that the states be abolished.
Analysts attribute the violence to the United States’ dysfunctional governmental structure, which is composed of a federal government, fifty states (each with its own governor, legislature, board of education, judicial and police systems), and countless municipalities. The street protesters also claim that politicians who have won office in internationally certified democratic elections are not legitimate.
Fortunately, after the initial naïve euphoria about a “democratic spring,” clearer heads have started to prevail. Several individuals involved in the violence have been charged with terrorism, and Bosnia’s security minister has been forced to resign.
Nevertheless, despite the bad reporting and analysis, Bosnia’s recent unrest should remind people in Washington and Brussels that current policy towards the region is floundering. There are a myriad reasons for this—from outmoded stereotypes of the region’s problems, to rigid and inflexible bureaucratic thinking about how the Balkans should be integrated into the EU, to the fact that the major powers are using the states (or peoples) of southeastern Europe as pawns in higher-level chess games, or that that the Balkans now only get the attention of low-level bureaucrats from Foggy Bottom to Whitehall to the Quai d’Orsay, and, ultimately, the simple reality that at this moment foreign-policy establishments have more pressing world problems to deal with. Nevertheless, the fact that people are ignoring southeastern Europe does not mean that politics and time are standing still there, or that ignoring the problems will make them go away.
In the Bosnian case, what has been lacking for several years is a coherent concept of how to stabilize the country internally and externally. Much as with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, what the final outcome should look like is relatively clear, but mustering the political determination and courage to get there is lacking. Conceptually, however, the pathway to such an endpoint would look something like this:
1) Bosnia joins NATO. Although this would be a hard sell for the Serbs due to the memory of the NATO bombing campaigns of 1995 and 1999, they should swallow their pride and realize that time has moved on. Proposals to demilitarize Bosnia are understandably unacceptable to the Bosnian Muslims, who would find themselves essentially unarmed between some 8-9 million Serbs and 4-5 million Croats (including those in Croatia and Serbia proper). Most importantly, NATO membership would provide the secure environment needed for the various parties to make the difficult concessions and compromises required of them. An added side-benefit would be that this would ease Serbia’s entry into the alliance as well.
2) Collective autonomy for Bosnian Croats. Conventional wisdom holds that the problem in Bosnia is the Dayton Agreement. This, in fact, has the problem upside down and backwards—Bosnia is not the way it is because of Dayton; rather, Dayton is the way it is because of the divisions and cleavages in Bosnian society. The epicenter of Bosnia’s problems today is the Washington Agreement of 1994, which created a Muslim-Croat federation that does not give the Croats the institutional capacity to defend their interests. This has resulted in a near-constant crisis in the federation for the past six years, while at the same time the Serb entity in Bosnia, the Republika Srpska (RS), has enjoyed considerably greater stability and success in its political and economic reform efforts. It is currently considered heresy to endorse some form of Croat entity in Bosnia; however, until the Croat question in Bosnia is resolved, there is no way the country can move forward.
3) The Office of the High Representative (OHR) is shut down, totally and for good. As far back as 2004, the blue-ribbon International Commission on the Balkans reported that all of their interlocutors were of the belief that the OHR needed to be closed. Ten years on, the OHR limps along, utterly useless but still representing an extremely negative dynamic in Bosnian politics. The EU’s Venice Commission has claimed that Bosnia cannot enter the EU while the OHR continues to impinge upon Bosnia’s sovereignty and threaten its legitimate domestic political processes. Now that almost two decades have passed since the war, it is time to totally shut down Europe’s last neocolonial institution.
4) The EU develops a new accession mechanism for Bosnia. For Eurocrats, creating a modified accession process is unthinkable, yet the deep divisions in Bosnian society make it practically impossible for the country to adopt and implement the 170,000 pages (and growing) of the acquis communautaire that more mono-ethnic states such as Estonia or Hungary were able to carry out (for that matter, it is a fair question whether similarly ethnically-divided states such as Belgium, Cyprus, or Spain would today be able to agree on EU required reforms). A number of regional leaders, such as Croatian foreign minister Vesna Pusic, have started arguing that Brussels needs just such a new approach to Bosnia. The hard question for Brussels is whether a more stable outcome for Europe would be a slowly-reforming Bosnia inside the EU’s guiding mechanisms, or a completely dysfunctional Bosnia on the outside, perpetually falling further and further behind the rest of Europe. This is a problem the EU may well have to confront regarding other states in the region as well.
The trick to such a strategy is that it requires coordinated and synchronized movement on all of these fronts simultaneously. Since all parties concerned have important compromises to make, each has to see that at the same time they are gaining something significant in return.
Of course, given the downturn in relations between western capitals and Moscow, whether it is possible to muster the required political will and energy to develop and implement such a coherent strategy is of course an open question. But what is certain is that ignoring problems in southeastern Europe will not make them go away, and there are still people in the region willing to resort to violence to get their way. As one Bosnian “activist” put it recently, “The war is not over. We are still fighting the same war.” Which reminds one of something Bismarck prophetically said in the late nineteenth century: “If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans.”
Gordon N. Bardos is president of SEERECON, a strategic advisory and political risk analysis firm specializing on southeast Europe.
