Balkanizer

Facing Reality: Lajcak’s introduction to politics in BiH

June 28th, 2007 by vanja

Regarding this post: I wrote this essay yesterday (27 JUN 2007) at work. It is an unrefined and uneditted thinking about the departure of the old High Representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina (Christian Schwarz-Schilling) and the arrival of new HR -Slovakian diplomat Miroslav Lajcak. I welcome your comments and thoughts.

Vanja

Facing Reality: Lajcak’s Introduction to Politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The current High Representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina – Mr. Schwarz-Schilling – will be remembered for a few things. When he came to this country to replace Lord Paddy Ashdown, he inherited a political climate that was, for Bosnian standards, civilized and optimistic in its outlook toward meaningful reforms in defense, police, education, and even the Dayton constitution.

This climate quickly eroded as Mr. Schwarz-Schilling pronounced his hands-off approach thus enabling domestic political factors - eager to assume leadership role based not on prudence, temperance and willingness to work towards the common goal – to climb to power by exploiting and deepening ethnic divide (the quickest and surest way to power in these parts of the world).

Those who follow the events in Bosnia and Herzegovina will note that during Schwartz-Schilling’s mandate the country has lost all of its positive momentum towards stability, reform and integration into EU and NATO and has, in fact, severely retreated into ethnic intolerance and bickering that is becoming a crisis of pre-war proportions.

As if the situation has not become tense enough, the outgoing HR has made two decisions that will severely affect the incoming HR, Mr. Miroslav Lajcak, in most negative terms. The first decision was Mr. Schwarz-Schilling’s announcement that he would remain in Bosnia and Herzegovina past his termination as the High Representative. Although he explains such a move as merely wishing to avoid rushed departure from the country, it is highly unlikely to expect that Mr. Schwarz-Shilling will remain a passive and uninvolved person – a tourist perhaps – in Sarajevo for an unspecified period of time. Indeed, after learning that his mandate as HR would not be extended, Mr. Schwarz-Schilling floated an idea that he would like to remain as an adviser to Bosnia and Herzegovina’s transformation effort to meet EU standards for ascension. This idea, however, was quickly shut down.

Facing the possibility that he would go down in history as Bosnia and Herzegovina’s worst High Representative, Mr. Schwarz-Schilling may be contemplating that he still has time to preserve his legacy in a positive light acting as an unofficial advisor. It would be hard to imagine that the new HR and key ambassadors to Bosnia and Herzegovina would not return well-meaning, advisory calls from Mr. Schwarz-Schilling. It is even harder to imagine that Mr. Lajcak would deny his predecessor an open-door policy to the institution he once ran.

Despite Mr. Schwartz-Schilling’s best intentions, his presence will serve as nothing more than a distraction to hard decisions and course corrections that Mr. Lajcak – and international community - must take in the coming months in order to reverse negative political and security trends in the country.

Mr. Schwartz-Schilling’s second antagonizing decision that would come back to haunt Mr. Lajcak’s policy direction is the proclamation that the memorial park – cemetery – of the Srebrenica victims would be placed under the state protection and administration at the expense of the RS government and police. Mr. Schwarz-Schilling’s rationale was to give a token reward to demands placed by the Srebrenica survivors and to remove Srebrenica as a political issue (a dead-end, desperate attempt by the Bosniak politicians to cash in on the ruling by the Hague Tribunal that RS was complicit in the Srebrenica 1995 massacre).

Although his action may be seen as positive, it’s timing was completely wrong. Within hours of the announcement, the RS government and the RS National Assembly each condemned this act as another attempt to strip RS from its powers and territorial jurisdiction using unconstitutional means. Instead of removing Srebrenica from the political agenda, Mr. Schwarz-Schilling’s decision regarding the memorial will make this town a rallying cry for all RS political forces resisting meaningful reforms in the country. Indeed, Srebrenica survivors would have been better served as citizens if the HR had focused on larger strategic reforms aimed at benefiting all citizens, rather than micro-managing war memorial’s administration.

The situation with the memorial will undoubtedly serve the Bosnian Serb recidivists to argue against HR’s further reliance on the Bonn Powers, which very well may be the only remaining instrument at HR’s disposal for passing through deadlocked legislation and removing unruly politicians. If this happens, not only would the international community lose important administrative powers, it would forego the remaining shreds of influence over RS Prime Minister Milorad Dodik – who is already openly taunting HR to remove him if he dares – and elevate him to a de facto RS ruler-for-life.

This scenario, however improbable, pessimistic or alarmist, is more than just a Serb nationalist utopia. It represents the strategic goal on the part of the RS political leadership and powerful right-wing faction in Serbia proper that still believe in Milosevic’s project. Instead of relying on military power, as it was the case in the early 1990s, the new wave of Greater Serbian proponents – many of whom were labeled as “reformist” and “moderate” by the Western media and diplomats - are using pseudo-democratic methods of blocking every meaningful reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina that would serve all of its citizens. Between negotiations, they masterfully use acquired time to raise tensions with inflammatory rhetoric and turn every legislative issue into an inter-ethnic dispute and a serious crisis.

Their ultimate goal is to portray Bosnia and Herzegovina to international community as a failed state – a state whose “constituent” peoples cannot agree over a single, however mundane, issue. A number of foreign newspapers and magazines have already made such proclamations, undoubtedly reflecting certain diplomats’ private views. If Bosnia and Herzegovina indeed becomes a failed state, it will only be prudent to let it partition along ethnic lines, conventional wisdom would have it.

In essence, the RS leadership and their mentors in Belgrade are using the same strategy as Kosovo Albanians – solidifying control over the near-ethnically pure RS and making unworkable any semblance of multiethnic life and civil society. The last remaining obstacle for RS secession is to gain international legitimacy. However, if Bosnia and Herzegovina is eventually deemed a failed state, the RS would automatically gain legitimacy since it would be seen as an administrative territorial unit with a centralized and stable government with efficient police, economy, education, etc. Same could not be said for Bosnia and Herzegovina as a state or the other entity – Federation BiH.

The first thing that Mr. Lajcak must do is to see through the apparent political quagmire and recognize the strategic goals of various political factions in the country. Only by doing so will he realize what is really at stake: Bosnia and Herzegovina’s very statehood. By default, US and EU reputation in producing and keeping peace in this country is also at stake.

Once this understanding is reached, the incoming HR must be able to break free from his predecessor’s legacy and set in motion aggressive series of polices that would ensure Bosnia and Herzegovina’s survival, gradual stabilization and prospering. These policies must rely on the principle that ethnic groups’ rights must be preserved but not at the expense of the state. In order words, entities or future administrative units must not enjoy state-like powers as they enjoy now. As long as that is the case, secessionist forces will continue to bide for time and obfuscate any attempts by domestic and international powers to move country toward Euro-Atlantic integration. That is why the new HR will have to reclaim the right to use Bonn powers, but only in furtherance of strategic goals rather than to solve tactical problems.

Mr. Lajcak must be aware that the burden for these bold initiatives lies directly on the international community and HR as the tip of its spear. There are simply no coherent domestic political forces or political tools that could counter the secessionist ambitions. Dayton peace agreement is the product of the international efforts to end the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and within its framework lies the inability to amend it from within Bosnia and Herzegovina. Right now, its perseverance works only in favor of those who wish to go down in history as fathers of Greater Serbia. We must not be afraid to name them: Milorad Dodik and Vojislav Kostunica.

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