LOCAL PRESS

 

Joksimovic: Key and more dynamic phase of negotiations with the EU (RTS)

Serbian Minister without Portfolio in charge of EU integration Jadranka Joksimovic has told the morning news of Radio and Television of Serbia (RTS) that, at the intergovernmental conference in Brussels, Serbia will open the first two chapters with the EU whereby a new phase in the EU integration process will commence. She will be part of the Serbian delegation at the opening of chapters in Brussels. Joksimovic says that today’s conference is only a formalization of the fact that Serbia is prepared for opening the negotiations on chapters. “We opened officially the negotiations two years ago, but this is a very important step, this is a deeper and more dynamic phase of the negotiations, the key phase of negotiations,” she pointed out. “I think that once you open the chapters it is the right time to start with the new communication strategy towards citizens, to explain what is the content of Chapter 35 and it what way , once we adopt all standards, when we are ready, will this directly influence the improvement of life, but also the society,” says Joksimovic. She says that the essence of Chapter 35 covers the area from public procurement to foreign and security policy, to consumer rights, agriculture, i.e. all those areas that are important. “Chapter 35 is a process that will be parallel to the process of negotiations with the EU and it is not a replacement for the dialogue, but we will monitor through the chapter to what extent we have implemented certain things. If the other side obstructs or blocks in some way the dialogue, it will not reflect on Belgrade’s position. We will continue our negotiations,” said Joksimovic. “I think that Chapter 35, the manner in which it will be formulated, should not hinder or scare us in any way in opening other chapters. These are obligations that have not been comfortable or easy from the very start, this is a process that we have entered and it has its challenges, but I think that we will in no way suffer over this since we are the devoted side in the dialogue, and not everything depends from us,” said Joksimovic.

 

McAllister: Real job starts for Serbia (Danas)

The European Parliament, European Commission and EU member states have always underlined that the opening of the first chapters requires a parallel and sustainable progress in the dialogue with Kosovo and the rule of law, and Serbia has made progress in all three chapters relating to the issues, European Parliament Rapporteur for Serbia David McAllister tells Danas. In regard to Chapter 35 that deals with the normalization of relations between Belgrade and Pristina, he commended Serbia’s commitment to engaging in the dialogue. “The agreements reached on 25 August on the formation of the Community of Serb Municipalities, energy, telecommunications and the bridge in Mitrovica are a positive development for which Serbia is reaping the reward on 14 December.  However, this is just a transitional objective. The real job starts with the opening of chapters,” McAllister assessed.

 

Lopandic: Draft resolution on Kosovo unbalanced (Tanjug)

The Serbian Mission to the EU has reacted to the draft resolution on Kosovo prepared by European Parliament (EP) Rapporteur Ulrike Lunacek, noting it is one-sided and unbalanced and contains a series of unfair comments concerning Serbia. The Head of the Serbian Mission to the EU Dusko Lopandic told Tanjug on Saturday evening that he had sent a letter to Ulrike Lunacek and all members of the EP Foreign Affairs Committee, noting that she had not called for implementation of the agreements reached so far in the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue. “In a certain way, Lunacek expresses understanding for what has been done in Pristina, or the fact that the part of the agreement concerning the Community of Serb Municipalities has been suspended and sent to the Constitutional Court,” the Ambassador noted. Other remarks refer to the rapporteur's failure to mention the issues troubling Serbs, attacks on Serbs as a minority, the return of people displaced from Kosovo and Metohija. The rapporteur also presents the recent developments at UNESCO in a one-sided and partial way, even critical of Serbia, he noted.

 

Vucic: We are crawling in the dark (Tanjug)

Today marks 17 years since the murder of six young men in the Panda café in Pec, a crime for which nobody has been held responsible to this day. Boys between the ages of 14 and 24 were killed when two masked murderers entered the café and gunned them down. Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said on Friday that he was almost certain what happened 17 years ago but that he didn’t have enough evidence for this. “We are crawling in the dark. I am almost certain that I know what happened there, but I don’t have enough evidence. That is the only thing I can say, anything else I would say would be interpreted as if I am violating the principles of respecting institutional work,” Vucic told the press. He said that he was disgusted by many things from the Serbian past, even though there are also numerous things of which we can be proud.

 

Prime Minister to give us information on Panda case (B92)

B92 has learned that the Panda case, following the unsuccessful investigation of the War Crimes Prosecution, has been transferred several weeks ago to the Organized Crime Prosecution. The victims were high school students Ivan Obradovic, Zoran Stanojevic, Svetislav Ristic, Dragan Trifovic, Vukosav Gvozdenovic and student Ivan Radovic. Their parents have been waiting for the truth for 17 years. “It is obvious that only we, the parents, have a headache, while the state doesn’t care. If the state doesn’t have the strength to say this, then who will have the strength,” says Zvonimir Gvozdenovic, whose son was murdered in the Panda café. Ljubomir Ristic’s son was also murdered the same evening. “I call on Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic to share with us the information on the events in the café on 14 December 1998. He owes this to our sons,” says Ristic. Despite Vucic’s statement in 2013 that gave hope that something will be resolved, there is no information that the investigation progressed. The Panda case has not been launched in the Kosovo judiciary. The graves of the boys are difficult to find since the city cemetery in Pec has been completely destroyed.

 

REGIONAL PRESS

 

Agreement on cooperation between SIPA and Ministry of Interior of RS will be reviewed (Novo vrijeme)

The existing agreement on operational cooperation and coordination of police structures should be reviewed and precisely defined, as agreed in Banja Luka by the B&H Minister of Security Dragan Mektic, Minister of Internal Affairs of Republika Srpska (RS) Dragan Lukac, director of the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) Perica Stanic and Director of the Police of RS Gojko Vasic. The mentioned operating agreement will be reviewed and signed during the next week by the Director of Police of RS and Director of SIPA, which is aiming more efficient handling and coordination in future cooperation, as announced from the Ministry of Interior of RS. The reason for this meeting was, as they added, the overcoming of the situation regarding the cooperation between the Ministry of Interior of RS and SIPA. Moreover, the future cooperation agreements in the fight against terrorism were also planned at the meeting.

 

Contract on the border of B&H with Montenegro ratified (Klix.ba)

The House of Peoples of the B&H Parliamentary Assembly at the session in Sarajevo gave consent for the ratification of the Contract on the border of B&H with Montenegro, according to which the area of Sutorina remains in the ownership of Montenegro. The contract proposed by the B&H Presidency was earlier adopted by the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of B&H. Ten delegates voted for the ratification, while only the Bosniak delegate Sifet Podzic voted against. The Croat delegate Mario Karamatic was the only one interested in discussion, reminding that the issue of the ownership of Sutorina launched by the delegate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the House of Representatives Denis Becirovic has drawn great attention of the media during this year. “I will support the ratification since it defines our border with the friendly country of Montenegro. This issue made a big fuss and the announcements by individuals from B&H that they will sue Montenegro because of Sutorina before some kind of international institution were absurd, since all international agreements would be violated by that,” Karamatic said. The House of Peoples also took note of the Information on the problem of resolving the issue permanent accommodation of the Agency for the prevention of corruption and coordination of the fight against corruption in B&H in East Sarajevo. The draft conclusions by the Bosniak delegate Halid Genjac, who suggested to the Council of Ministers of B&H to declare ineffective the decision on the purchase of the space for the accommodation of the Agency and that the Common Affairs Service should define vulnerabilities in this case, were not supported. The House of Peoples adopted the conclusion on establishing the Temporary joint commission of the both houses of the Parliamentary Assembly of B&H for the implementation of the procedure for the appointment of deputy auditor general within the Office for the revision of institutions of B&H from the ranks of Bosniak people. The session of the House of Peoples of the Parliamentary Assembly of B&H ended after the termination of voting on all items on the agenda.

 

INTERNATIONAL PRESS

 

IS uses weapons exported to Britain from Serbia and Bosnia (newzy.net, by Sylvia Adams, 14 December 2015)

The report was made on the basis of thousands of recordings and photos, and the conclusion is that Islamic State has access to a large arsenal of weapons and ammunition, produced in more than 25 countries worldwide. The report goes on to blame the USA led coalition for failing to disarm Iraqi soldiers and to prevent human rights abuses and that the global community must enforce stricter controls on exporting arms to the country. Defense Secretary Ash Carter told Congress last week that the U.S.is sending additional special operations forces to Iraq and Syria. After taking control of Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, in June 2014, IS fighters acquired a windfall of internationally manufactured arms from Iraqi stockpiles. Unnamed US officials said that the 8-page report predicts that the self-proclaimed Islamic State will spread worldwide and grow in numbers, unless it suffers a significant loss of territory on the battlefield in Iraq and Syria. Sometimes, the US accidentally airdrops weapons directly to ISIS, as The Washington Post reported previous year. "Experts have also observed: Austrian Steyr and Russian Dragunov SVD sniper rifles; Russian, Chinese, Iraqi and Belgian machine guns; former Soviet Union/Yugoslav anti-tank missiles; and Russian, Chinese, Iranian and American artillery systems". Amnesty International also highlighted the U.S.'s more recent shipment of weapons to Iraq: "Between 2011 and 2013, the United States of America signed billions of dollars' worth of contracts for 140 M1A1 Abrams tanks, F16 fighter aircraft, 681 Stinger shoulder held units, Hawk anti-aircraft batteries and other equipment". As she explains, the proliferation of weapons in Iraq stretches from "the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s to the US-led occupation in 2003 and its aftermath - in which weapons entered the region with very lax controls and security - and then from 2006 and onwards, when the Iraqi government was procuring massive arms from European Union countries, the US, Russia and China". The extremist group has also snatched arms from Syrian forces after capturing military bases there. "It finds that there is a close match between the types of weapons now being used by the IS and the inventory of the Iraqi military, built up over the past five decades". He added that there also was no "credible plan or mix of U.S., Arab, and Turkish efforts or... a meaningful rebel force in Syria to deal with ISIS - or the Assad forces". "This catastrophe is another wakeup call - all states must take a long view and conduct much deeper institutional risk assessments for arms export decisions and act with much greater precaution and restraint when transferring and managing arms", the report warns. Mr. Obama said that as part of this strategy, the coalition will continue airstrikes against the ISIS leaders as well as the group's military infrastructures.

 

EU concern after Bosnia's Serbs suspend police co-operation (BBC News, 11 December 2015)

The EU has expressed concern after Bosnian Serbs decided to suspend co-operation with the country's central police force and courts. The decision could "jeopardize the functioning of the judiciary and law enforcement in BiH [Bosnia-Herzegovina]", the EU warned. The Bosnian Serb move follows raids by officers investigating war crimes. Most Bosnian Serbs live in one of two entities set up by the Dayton agreement that ended the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.

'Provocation'

Tensions have been rising for several months after lawmakers in the Bosnian Serb Republic, or Republika Srpska, voted to hold a referendum on the authority of Bosnia's national court in their entity. Bosnian Serb President Milorad Dodik, who proposed the referendum, said the country's prosecutors had been more lenient towards "the few Bosniaks" charged with war crimes compared with Serbs. On Thursday Bosnian Serb Interior Minister Dragan Lukac decried raids by state investigators looking for Bosnian Serb suspects in the town of Novi Grad as "inappropriate and provocative". Supporting the move to suspend law-enforcement co-operation, Mr Dodik said the operation constituted an attack "that could even have provoked armed conflict". But in a statement, the EU called on authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina to "maintain mutual co-operation and dialogue". It underlined "the need to respect the rule of law throughout the whole territory of the country". Bosnia became an independent state after the war, but half its population - around two million people - had been displaced, and its infrastructure and economy was left in tatters. Its political set-up is complicated, with the two regions having their own governments, parliament, police and other bodies - linked to a central Bosnian government and rotating presidency. The country has been encouraged to seek membership of the European Union to strengthen its stability, but it has been unable to escape high levels of corruption, unemployment and political divisions that have put off foreign investors.

 

Western Balkans: EU blindspot on Russian propaganda (EUobserver, by Andrew Rettman, 12 December 2015)

The shut-down of Serbia’s Tanjug news agency is helping Russia to promote anti-EU feeling in the Western Balkans. The agency stopped work at the end of November, letting go 180 staff.

It closed, in part, due to International Monetary Fund (IMF) demands. The IMF, under its Serbia bailout, said the government had to privatise Tanjug, but it couldn’t find a buyer. Tanjug earned a reputation for independent journalism not least in 1989 by its reporting on the Romanian revolution. Its passing leaves Sputnik, a Russian state news agency, free to become a leading source of online news in Serbia, Republika Srpska (the Serb part of Bosnia), and in Kosovar Serb enclaves. Sputnik launched its Serbian-language service in February. “It’s relatively small. But it’s just a baby … and it’s growing fast. I see more and more of their pieces every day. In the absence of Tanjug, it will grow even faster,” Dejan Anastasijevic, an award-winning former Tanjug correspondent in Brussels, told EUobserver. One recent Sputnik story, entitled Not Russian Propaganda: The Balkans are Unstable by Intention, said the West is fomenting instability in the region as a pretext for intervention. A second article said Kosovar Albanians are planning pogroms, with Western blessing, against Kosovar Serbs. A third one “exposed” a “secret plan” by the West to topple Miroslav Dodik, the Republika Srpska leader. It said the plan is to unify Bosnia under Muslim rule after Christmas.

Dangerous context

The stories come in a dangerous context. On Monday (7 December), unknown gunmen shot at a private home and a memorial site in the Serb village of Gorazdevac in Kosovo. On Tuesday, gunmen shot a shop in the Serb village of Srbobran. In Bosnia, Dodik is calling a referendum on secession, just 20 years after the war, which claimed 40,000 lives. Violent protests in Kosovo are trying to stop an EU accord on better relations with Serbia. Protests in Montenegro are trying to stop Nato accession. Serbian authorities don’t see Russian propaganda as a threat, however.

One contact told EUobserver the country’s EU path is irreversible. “We’ll open the first chapters [of EU entry talks] in December. That’s the main goal. After Serbia opens the chapters, it won’t, one day, turn around. You don’t go backward in the EU accession process,” he said. “Russia keeps telling us that it has nothing against us joining the EU. Nato is the no-go topic,” he added. He said Sputnik has no influence because most people get information on TV. He also noted that CNN, a US broadcaster, launched a Serbian-language service, N1, last year. Al Jazeera, owned by Qatar, also has a Balkans service. “Sputnik sometimes has strong interviews and original topics. But you know who’s behind it. It’s quite lame. I don’t think it shapes public opinion,” the Serb source said.

EU blindspot

The EU foreign service, in summer, created a new media cell, called StratCom East, to counter Russian propaganda. But its mandate, for now, primarily covers EU countries and former Soviet states, such as Moldova and Ukraine. It works with a handful of Balkans reporters and bloggers, who send alerts on fake stories. Its weekly newsletter, which debunks Russian stories, also has some Balkans subscribers. “We’re aware there’s a disinformation challenge in the Western Balkans too … but we’re not resourced to do more than just follow the issue [in the region],” an EU source said. The EU Commission, in its last enlargement report, endorsed Serbia’s media privatisation process. But it said Serbia made “no progress” on protecting media from state bullying, shady business interests, and, in individual cases, from “threats and violence” against journalists. Anastasijevic, the former Tanjug correspondent, said N1 is also at risk, potentially creating more space for Russian news. “The CNN spin-off has already been targeted by [Serb PM Aleksandar] Vucic as a tool of Serbian enemies, and may soon be shut down or neutered,” he said.

 

Dayton Ain’t Going Nowhere (Foreign Policy, by Andrew MacDowall, 12 December 2015)

The Dayton Agreement was meant to end a war, not govern a state. But now, 20 years later, Bosnia is still stuck with it.

Twenty years after the Dayton Agreement brought three and a half years of brutal war and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Herzegovina to a close, a single article of the peace treaty still functions as the country’s constitution. For over a decade, there has been a consensus among outsiders that Dayton is not fit for the purpose of running a state that aspires to be a full member of the Euro-Atlantic, liberal-democratic world. Bosnia aims to join both the European Union — almost the only thing that its fractious political elite can agree on — and NATO. The Dayton settlement, at least in its current form, is both intolerably unjust and mind-bogglingly unwieldy. It was never intended to last this long, and even those tasked with its implementation rue the fact that it had no timeframe for expiry or revision. But for the foreseeable future, Dayton is here to stay, thanks to a lack of political will to find a viable alternative. The international community, now led by the European Union, rather than the U.S., has effectively conceded this with a new approach to Bosnia’s development that’s based on economic, rather than constitutional, reform. Given the entrenched positions of the country’s ethno-nationalist elite, which thrives on networks of patronage and exploits fears of a return to conflict, Dayton may be the least-worst option for managing and running the country. Signed in Paris on December 14, 1995, the Dayton Agreement had an overriding aim: to bring the three-year-old war in Bosnia to an end. The war killed nearly 100,000 people and displaced more than 2 million. The 44-month siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica Massacre (which itself claimed 8,000 lives) were particularly horrendous episodes. Images of emaciated prisoners behind barbed wire in prison camps evoked the Second World War in modern Europe. The agreement was worked out by Richard Holbrooke, President Clinton’s chief negotiator and Assistant Secretary of State, and a figure of gravitas and determination: the sort of character that has been all-too-lacking in the international community’s dealings with Bosnia over the past decade. Dayton pulled apart the country’s warring sides: the Muslims (Bosniaks) and Croats on one side, and the Serbs on the other. The agreement recognized two territories of approximately equal land area: the Serb Republic and the Muslim-Croat Federation, which has a larger share of the population. These two entities are now effectively autonomous regions with their own governments. In a post-Dayton move in 1996, the Federation was further divided into ten cantons to stop another war that had broken out between Bosniaks and Croats. The result is a top-heavy system of government with multiple tiers. With continued ethnic animosity and the individual greed of politicians and officials thrown into the mix, the Dayton arrangement can easily be abused. As a Bosniak MP put it to me, “Dayton gives tools to develop, but also a lot of tools to block that are stronger.” In 2013, protesters took to the streets after deadlock between tiers of government meant that newborn babies were not issued with identity numbers needed to travel abroad for emergency health care. The child at the center of the case eventually died. The Dayton Agreement established an international council of 55 countries and organizations to oversee its implementation, headed by a “High Representative.” But since the U.K.’s Paddy Ashdown’s tenure in this position ended in 2006, the international community has taken a hands-off approach, hoping that domestic politicians would take the lead in reforming this clumsy system. The United States, in particular, has backed off, focusing on other, more pressing regions. The result was a decade of stasis and rising nationalist rhetoric. “We’ve gone backwards over the past decade, but I’m afraid of the alternatives,” says Adnan Huskic, a political analyst from Bosnia. “It’s still us versus them, as it has been for years. There are irreconcilable positions, as irreconcilable as they were before the war. I don’t see the capacity of the political elites to come up with a better solution, or how they would do it.” “Dayton did was it was intended to do, and it was not a foregone conclusion that peace would happen, or would be sustained,” says one Western diplomat. “But a peace agreement to end a war not the same as an agreement that creates the basis for a modern, vibrant, pluralist European society. The state presidency rotates every eight months, there are thirteen ministries of education and 150 ministers for a country of four million. The country has too many ministers, and too few leaders.” Not only this, but Dayton explicitly denies some of Bosnia’s citizens’ political rights. For years, rightly or wrongly, the international community has identified the so-called “Sejdic-Finci question” as the single biggest problem with the current system. Sejdic and Finci are Bosnians of Jewish and Roma ethnicity who successfully challenged the Dayton constitution in the European Court of Human Rights, specifically the stipulation that the three-member state presidency, and membership of the upper house of parliament, is limited to those specifically identifying as Bosniak, Serb, or Croat. This essentially disenfranchises all other ethnic groups, and Bosnians who shun ethno-religious labels altogether. But attempts to change Sejdic-Finci have failed, following extensive horse-trading over other issues. Another flaw in the presidential system is that the Croat president has, on a number of occasions, effectively been elected by Bosniak votes, as the two ethnicities vote together in the Federation. This has prompted Croats to complain that they are not getting to choose their own president, with some calling for the creation of a third, Croat, sub-state to solve this problem. Paddy Ashdown identified this movement in November 2015 as one of the factors leading the country towards a “perfect storm” and a possible repeat of the centrifugal forces of 1992. “We already have enough problems with two entities, imagine what it’d be like with three,” says one Bosniak member of parliament. For many of the country’s non-Serbs, the existence of the Serb Republic is the biggest affront in the Dayton settlement. They view the entity as the product of and reward for ethnic cleansing and genocide, with a degree of justification. During the war, Bosnian Serbs, with the support of the Serb-dominated Yugoslav National Army, carved out territory through ruthless ethnic cleansing; much of that territory is now the Serb Republic. The man most often accused of throwing a spanner in Bosnia’s works is Milorad Dodik, the Serb Republic’s pugnacious president, who regularly agitates for greater autonomy or even independence. He has repeatedly challenged state-level institutions and called the viability of Bosnia and Herzegovina into question. This year, Dodik has called for two referenda: whether state-level courts should have jurisdiction within the Serb Republic, and whether it should secede outright if these demands are not met. Both, however, are unconstitutional (i.e. legally inadmissible under Dayton), and the date set for the first was quietly missed. The second is due to take place in 2018. Dodik is widely seen as the greatest threat to Bosnia’s integrity and stability, but he insists he is merely upholding the guarantees of Serbian autonomy enshrined in Dayton. Sources in Banja Luka, the Serb Republic’s de facto capital, suggest that his increasing nationalist rhetoric is not founded on genuine desire for independence, but is bluster to shore up support after an unusually close election in 2014 left him barely clinging to power. It is also motivated by concerns about what corruption a more robust central judicial system might unearth in the Serb Republic. Despite calls to abolish it by some Bosniak politicians and others who want a unitary state, the Serb Republic isn’t going anywhere. British Ambassador Edward Ferguson, an increasingly important figure given the U.K.’s leading role in driving EU-mandated reforms, describes such calls as “just as unacceptable as Serb attempts to undermine the State judicial institutions or to promote secession.” While Dodik appears to be the most obvious nationalist demagogue, politicians of all three ethnicities have learned to exploit the system. Patronage and clientelism are rife, with the public administration and state-owned companies stuffed with political appointees. Fear of loss of jobs, and worse, keeps voters loyal to ethno-nationalist parties — while another half of the electorate stays away from the polls altogether. “The system has created a caste of politicians legitimized by elections, spraying money at certain social categories and the overstaffed state apparatus and state-owned enterprises,” says Huskic. “If you want a paradigmatic case of state capture, look no further.” In a provocative article following anti-government protests in early 2014, former British ambassador to Sarajevo Charles Crawford suggested that the Bosniak elite, and the vast networks of others who benefit from ties to it, was no less culpable than the Serbs for the country’s failures. Crawford argues that an economically successful, liberalized and less statist Federation would encourage Serbs to drop some of their resistance to the unitary country. Patronage networks are far from uncommon in post-communist societies and emerging markets, and to lay all the blame at Dayton’s door would be unfair. But Bosnia’s government system and ethnic element makes the scenario more dangerous and complicated. Youth unemployment is running at 60 percent — the highest rate in the world — and a growing number of impoverished young people disillusioned with mainstream politics can prove fertile ground for radical Islam, despite Bosnia’s predominant tradition of moderation and secularism. With the difficulty of changing the Dayton system and the pressing need for jobs, the EU launched a new strategy for Bosnia in 2014. Adopted by Bosnia in 2015, the new approach seeks to promote economic liberalization rather than wrestling with thorny constitutional issues. The prize for reform is an enhancement of Bosnia’s EU accession process and support from international financial institutions such as the IMF. As well as the goal of boosting employment and growth, diplomats openly say that one of the aims of the “reform agenda” is to reduce the public administration and cut back on state-owned enterprises, weakening the structures that have kept ethno-nationalist politicians in place. They hope that a more affluent, economically successful Bosnia, with a larger private sector trading across ethnic lines, will be more willing to address constitutional reform and reject nationalist rhetoric. Whether the elite will accept economic reforms that specifically target their power bases is questionable, however. More broadly, the international community has backed away from radical changes to Dayton, despite its many drawbacks. “If there’s political will, the system can work,” says one diplomat. “I think we were occasionally guilty of excessive ideology. Changing Dayton is not a prerequisite for EU membership, with a few exceptions like Sejdic-Finci. The system can be made to work, with goodwill.” Calls for the Office of the High Representative to reassert its active role in Bosnia — even to the extent of abolishing the Serb Republic if Dodik oversteps his mark — are unlikely to be heeded unless the security situation worsens significantly. While there’s a widespread understanding that OHR eased off too quickly after 2006, the diplomatic consensus now is that change must come from within, albeit with the external lures of EU support and IFI cash. From within — and inside the Dayton system.

Andrew MacDowall is a correspondent and analyst focusing on Central and Eastern Europe. Currently based in Belgrade, he has written for publications including the Financial Times, Politico Europe, and the Guardian.

 

Bosnia’s impaired peace may not last (Al Jazeera, by Paul Hockenos, 14 December 2015)

Twenty years after the Dayton Accords, Bosnia-Herzegovina remains deeply divided, impoverished and dysfunctional

Twenty years ago today, the 1995 Dayton Accords were signed in Paris, bringing peace to Bosnia. Brokered by Richard Holbrooke — a renowned diplomat who, before his death in 2010, served under every Democratic president from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama — the agreement stunned the world by ending a vicious civil war that the Europeans could not stop.

I was a correspondent for Pacifica Radio at the time, covering the bloody more than three-year conflict in Bosnia among Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims. I remember the elation on the streets of Sarajevo when the truce was announced. The nightmare was finally over. It was the first time since the Holocaust that genocide was perpetrated on European soil; the atrocities against Bosnian Muslims were described with a new term, “ethnic cleansing.” But for all its merits, the Dayton settlement, negotiated near Dayton, Ohio, failed to design a multiethnic state for postwar Bosnia based on national reconciliation and civic citizenship. Instead, the agreement imposed structures that reinforced existing ethnic cleavages and rewarded populist politicians who sought to achieve by rabble-rousing and obstruction what they couldn’t through war: splitting the country into ethnic statelets. Two decades later, Bosnia-Herzegovina remains impoverished, dysfunctional and churning with acrimony. It is loved by none of its embittered citizens and appears closer to outright disintegration than at any time since the signing of the Dayton agreement.

A non-viable polity

I left journalism after the accords to work on media reform under the transitional international administration in postwar Bosnia. There were reasons for hope. The stipulation that allowed refugees to return home, which reversed the ethnic cleansing, was an inspiring historic precedent. War crimes were being investigated, war criminals arrested, towns and bridges rebuilt and democratic elections organized. Human rights were written into every new law and policy.

But I was skeptical of some aspects of the settlement. Holbrooke insisted on negotiating with those most responsible for the war, including the Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman. The two leaders differed on many issues but saw eye to eye on one critical goal: to create a Bosnia that couldn’t survive. And they convinced Holbrooke to draw ethnic-based polities in the country, basically along the front lines of their former campaigns of expulsion and murder. For example, Republika Srpska is the name for territory that Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic’s militias captured — its residents “cleansed” of non-Serbs and all its mosques and Catholic churches destroyed. (Karadzic is currently on trial at The Hague on genocide charges.) The Dayton Accords mashed together the warring parties’ three polities rather than design a viable one anew. It burdened a country of 3.8 million people with a demarche for two autonomous entities, 14 legislatures, three presidents, three constitutional courts and nearly 150 ministers. It had no provisions on media reform or economic development, it allowed ultranationalist parties to run in elections, and it gave the international community little power to make changes when local power brokers flouted the multiethnic spirit of the agreement. The Dayton plan bought into the logic of nationalist Serb and Croat leaders, who simply wanted to carve off territory that they could control. The 1996 elections brought nationalist leaders to power — a pattern that would repeat itself for the next 20 years even though the corrupt local chieftains failed to improve the lot of anyone but themselves. The Dayton Accords’ essence was predicated on a flawed premise about Bosnia and its diverse ethnic groups, which include Jews, Germans, Roma, Albanians and many others as well as a large number of mixed families. Most American and European diplomats and the media understood the war as a religious-ethnic conflict among the three largest ethnicities — the Orthodox Christian Serbs, the Bosnian Muslims and the Catholic Croats. Accepting the narrative of the nationalist Serb and Croat leaders, the international community believed that the warring parties hated one another for centuries. It was easy to come to this conclusion if you parachuted into the war-wracked country for a couple of days or weeks before picking up a history book and then jetted back to Vienna, Washington or Paris. In the quest for easy explanations for a very complex conflict, the international community overlooked Bosnians who did not identify themselves primarily by nationalism. This applied to most Bosnians during long stretches of the region’s history. In the socialist decades — even after vicious internecine fighting during World War II — Bosnians of all backgrounds lived and worked together, even intermarried in the cities. Tolerance and diversity had been their pride. This spirit prevailed in Sarajevo and Tuzla and in pockets of civil society and smaller political parties even during the 1990s war. There was nothing primordial about the prejudice or inevitable about the slaughter. Radicals, who grabbed power in the vacuum of postsocialist Yugoslavia, fueled the fear and raged with impunity, since the major European powers dithered and Washington declared it had no dog in the fight. It wasn’t as easy as throwing a match onto a pile of hay; the propaganda and violence was powerful and relentless. The Dayton plan bought into the logic of Milosevic and Tudjman, who simply wanted to carve off territory that they could control. I left the international mission in 1999 amid equal measures of encouraging development and disappointment. I did not realize that we were actually at the high point of progress. It soon became clear that Bosnia — even though the peace was holding — could never get on its feet under its defective arrangement. At Dayton, the international community missed an opportunity to impose a workable constitution, and Bosnia’s local politicians were unwilling to create new structures that would undermine their fiefs. In 2005 the European Union took over Bosnia’s fate, with the intention of phasing out the international protectorate and preparing the country for integration into the union. EU leaders believed that they could entice Bosnians to work together by dangling the prospect of EU membership before them, the way it had in post-totalitarian Eastern and Southern European countries. But Bosnia-Herzegovina was not in the same league as 1990s Slovakia or 1970s Portugal. However, the EU’s incompetence reversed many of the gains made in the first decade of the peace process.

Deep malaise

Bosnia has now sunk into a deep malaise. Its citizens have lost all hope in the possibility of salvation from abroad or their own power to institute change. The economy is a basket case, with an average monthly wage of $880 and joblessness at 43 percent. Every young person with promise wants to leave the country. Schools separate students of different ethnicities with fences. Bosnian Muslims almost exclusively dominate even the once proudly multicultural Sarajevo. In 2014 enraged Bosnians across the country rioted, burning down government buildings and battling police. But even this moment of crosscutting ire could not congeal into a sustainable, coordinated opposition. Factional ethnic infighting — perpetuated above all by the Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodic — is currently at fever pitch. Dodic is threatening to hold a referendum on ending international oversight, which many see as a thinly veiled ploy to separate Srpska from Bosnia. This is in direct violation of the Dayton Accords and, should it happen, could drive the final nail in the coffin of the 20-year-old peace settlement. And it could reignite an armed conflict. Two decades ago, there was the possibility that the spirit of unity and reconciliation in Tuzla and Sarajevo could prevail. It was a spark that we hoped would catch — with our aid. But the shortcomings of the historic Dayton Accords snuffed it out — in the same breath that it ended the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II.

Paul Hockenos is a journalist living in Berlin. He has covered the transformations of the EU for over 25 years. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editorial policy.

 

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