Big Changes in Bosnia, or Just Another Drama?

By Peter Lippman

View of the cemetery at the memorial complex at Potocari near Srebrenica, where the Dutch Batallion that was supposed to be protecting Srebrenica was stationed. It was from here that the Serb forces took away the men to be massacred when Srebrenica fell (photo Peter Lippman).

SEVERAL DRAMATIC developments took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina this June and July. A close observer was tempted to say that the logjam preventing significant change in Bosnia finally was broken. However, in the nine years since the end of the war and the signing of the Dayton agreement, the more things have changed, the more they have remained the same. It is still too early to declare victory against the extreme nationalism and massive profiteering that have prevented the recovery and orderly functioning of the state of Bosnia.

The summer’s drama was kicked off by the refusal of NATO, at its late-June summit in Istanbul, to invite Bosnia into its Partnership for Peace (PfP) program. Since membership in this cooperative defense program is the first step toward eventual acceptance into NATO, Bosnia’s rejection was a stinging disappointment. Most Bosnians tie their hopes for their country’s recovery to acceptance in the great alliances of the West, NATO and the European Union. The Istanbul rejection underscored the fact that Bosnia has daunting hurdles to overcome before it can be taken seriously as a possible participant.

The Dayton agreement left Bosnia with a weak—at times all but nonexistent—state government presiding over two nearly independent “entities,” the Serb Republic and the Croat-Muslim Federation. Dayton also created the Office of the High Representative (OHR), whose current head is British diplomat Sir Paddy Ashdown. The OHR has sweeping powers to decree laws and remove public officials not deemed to be working in the interests of Bosnia’s reconstruction. The High Representative has used these powers sparingly, preferring to nurture local democracy rather than to reinforce Bosnia’s de facto protectorate status.

Due to problems built into the Dayton arrangement, however, this gentle approach has not worked. Dayton left in power those who led the war, and who simply continued to pursue their war goals by other means. These goals included the de facto division of the country into three ethnically homogenous territories, the plundering of the wealth created under two generations of socialism and, naturally, the protection of certain nationalist leaders sought for war crimes by the international community. The three coexisting nationalist/profiteer infrastructures have backed off from these goals only when severe pressure was applied by the international community.

The reason given for the NATO rejection was the failure of Bosnia, especially of the Serb entity, to cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in its pursuit of persons indicted for war crimes (PIFWCs). The most notorious of these is Radovan Karadzic, former president of the Serb entity and founder of the Serb nationalist party, the SDS (Serb Democratic Party). Croat and Muslim leaders, albeit reluctantly, have handed over indictees from their ranks. But the Serb leaders have not arrested a single suspect in nine years. All Serb suspects currently on trial at The Hague were detained by international forces.

Given this noncompliance, the OHR has of late focused a harsh spotlight on the nationalist Serb leaders and the SDS. This party, dominant in the Serb entity, has protected and funded fugitive leaders since they went underground in 1996. Most of the entity’s high officials are loyal party members. But protection of fugitives is, in fact, only one aspect of the transgressions of the Serb nationalists. The nationalist infrastructure’s greater crime is the ongoing personal enrichment of its leaders at the expense of those who lost the war: not only the non-Serbs who were expelled from the entity, but also, in fact, all those ordinary people of all ethnicities who were living reasonably well before the war and were uprooted, their futures plundered.

Ashdown Cracks Down

Now entering his third year as High Representative, Paddy Ashdown at first tolerated the SDS and other separatist parties. Prior to his arrival in 2002, these parties had had several years to hone their accommodating rhetoric of “democracy” and “reconciliation.” Believing them, Ashdown declared them to be “reformed” organizations with which he could make progress toward the country’s recovery. He thus joined in what turned out to be a cat-and-mouse game: the High Representative prodded the nationalists, and the nationalists yielded only the bare minimum concessions required to make a show of cooperation.

However, the end of Ashdown’s tenure in Bosnia is nearing, and he is to be the last High Representative. The pressure has increased to take measures to turn Bosnia into a state that will function well on its own and make steady progress toward membership in the European Union. The Bosnians distance from European status was highlighted wistfully this spring, when 10 other states joined the EU, including its former fellow Yugoslav republic of Slovenia. And when it became clear, around the same time, that NATO was not going to invite Bosnia into PfP, Ashdown changed his strategy. He turned up the heat on the SDS, as the most obvious group holding back Bosnia’s progress.

At the time the OHR was conducting a review of the SDS’s accounts, and already had frozen state and local budgetary contributions to the party until the SDS could show that all of its dealings were clean. This proved impossible, and Ashdown increased the volume on his warnings of punishment, both for corruption and failure to hand over Karadzic.

In the tense period leading up to the Istanbul conference, the Serb nationalists made a show of good intentions, slightly more convincing than previous such demonstrations. The Serb entity’s Srebrenica Commission, established under compulsion from the international community to investigate the July 1995 massacre of at least 7,000 Muslims in Srebrenica, delivered the first categorical admission by Serb authorities that Serbs had indeed committed this atrocity. The report used the word “liquidate” and admitted genocidal intentions. Soon after, President of the Serb entity Dragan Cavic addressed his constituency and called the massacre a “dark page” in the history of the Serb nation.

This attempt at honesty, although the result of pressure, constituted a small step toward healing the wounds of the war. But the move, and other declarations of good intentions, failed to counterbalance the overwhelming evidence of ongoing fraud and corruption practiced by the Serbs’ nationalist leaders. Immediately after the Istanbul conference, Ashdown let the hammer fall.

In the most forceful move of his tenure, the High Representative on June 29 removed from office 60 Serb officials—mayors, parliamentary representatives, police, and SDS President and Speaker of Parliament Dragan Kalinic. Some of these officials were to be banned from public functions permanently, and 48 of them will be allowed back in office only when Radovan Karadzic is residing in The Hague. Furthermore, citing overwhelming evidence of support of criminal networks and ongoing fraud (the financial audit revealed “a catalogue of abuse, corruption and tax evasion at all levels of the SDS”), Ashdown allocated public funds that otherwise would have gone to the SDS to state institutions concerned with the arrest of war criminals and control of corruption.

The first response of Serb officials, who apparently had expected the cat-and-mouse game to go on indefinitely, was one of shock. Using words that would better describe his own behavior during the war, Kalinic termed Ashdown’s move a “brutal cleansing of the political scene” in the Serb entity. At the same time, however, he taunted the international community, saying that “God and the angels” are protecting Karadzic.

Kalinic himself has quite a sordid history, and his removal from the “political scene” is long overdue. A Sarajevo physician before the war, on the eve of the war he joined the Serb extremists and declared that if those defending Sarajevo were to take over the municipal hospital, it should be bombed. Many of the high functionaries in the SDS have a similar war background and have displayed a similar cold-heartedness.

Immediately following the removals, all Serb officials boycotted a meeting of the state-level Council of Ministers. Sentiment against the sanctions was high in the Serb entity, and it did not seem likely that they would result in greater cooperation.

The Bigger Problem

Although Ashdown has finally attacked the corruption and criminality at the heart of the Serb regime, the problem appears to be more than he can handle—because a similar situation exists at virtually all levels of government among the Croats and Muslims as well. Ante Jelavic, former Croat member of the state-level three-part presidency, has been imprisoned since January on corruption charges. Asim Fazlic, Muslim former police chief of Travnik and deputy head of Bosnia Interpol, recently was arrested for participating in gang activities.

These examples are not even the tip of the iceberg; corruption is in the news almost daily and everyone is affected by it, as all Bosnia is under a regime of corruption. Perhaps the most revealing example of the audacity of this corruption is the June review of the finances of the state presidency, which showed that the presidency had overspent its budget by 20 percent (over $500,000), engaging in extravagant expenditures on luxury automobiles, personal clothing, and fancy gifts used in diplomatic encounters ($1,200 for fountain pens, for example).

These thefts from public funds are not only morally outrageous, but they contribute to the impoverishment of the mass of ordinary Bosnian citizens. With unemployment around 40 percent, half the country is living around or below the poverty line. Periodic surveys continue to reveal that at least two-thirds of young Bosnians would leave the country if they could. Some are even signing up for “security work” in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A retired Bosnian friend of mine, displaced from her hometown, described her feelings about the situation this way: “In a way it was less discouraging during the war than it is now, because in a war, you know it can’t be good. But now, nothing is changing, and it is depressing. I go and watch the most riotous comedy film, and it doesn’t cheer me up.

“I didn’t visualize my old age like this,” she continued. “We had a nice big house, and everything we needed. We worked hard, and we were honest. In a normal country, if you are a smart and capable person, you can make it. But here, no. When you see the government working hand in hand with the criminals, it feels hopeless, and then you get a sort of apathy.”

Stronger Moves Needed

In 1995 the international community allowed Dayton to ratify the ethnic cleansing and partition established by the war. Rather than abolish the nationalist parties that led the war and implement a campaign of de-Nazification, international officials negotiated with the warlords and left them in power. They even allowed one entity to be named after the Serbs, even though the Dayton constitution calls for refugee return and multi-ethnicity. As a result of these incredibly careless moves, today the international community is stymied and the ordinary citizens of Bosnia are paying the price.

When Paddy Ashdown delivered his speech outlining his emergency sanctions against the SDS, he underlined the fact that these moves were not an attack against the Serb entity, as that is protected by Dayton. But if the international community is ever to work seriously to turn Bosnia into a real state, it will have to abolish the preposterous institution of entities. For it is as Dragan Mikerevic, prime minister of the Serb entity, said: “There are so many of us, that we will all—every politician—sacrifice ourselves for the Serb entity.”

And so it will continue, as long as the gangsters are allowed to rule.

Peter Lippman is an independent human rights researcher based in Seattle.