As a follow-up to the previous post (Bosnia: How did it get to here?), I am posting the statement by the PIC in regards to the political situation in Bosnia. Although the statement is encouraging, it is by no means a guarantee to quite down the turmoil caused by the RS leadership.
PEACE IMPLEMENTATION COUNCIL STEERING BOARD POLITICAL DIRECTORS
Sarajevo, 31 October 2007
Declaration by the Steering Board of the Peace Implementation Council
Political Directors of the Peace Implementation Council Steering Board met in Sarajevo on 30 and 31 October 2007. The Chairman and Ministers of the Council of Ministers as well as leaders of the governing coalition were present during parts of the meeting.
In line with the decision taken at its June meeting, the PIC Steering Board reviewed the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since then, the situation in BiH has deteriorated further. Responsibility lies with political leaders from both entities who have blocked progress and undermined the political situation with their aggressive rhetoric. The situation is now of the utmost concern to the international community. The PIC Steering Board underscores that it is time for BiH politicians to end the practice of questioning the fundamental structure of the state or its component parts.
BiH urgently needs reform to build the kind of modern, efficient state that can take its place in Euro-Atlantic institutions and fulfil the promise of the Dayton Peace Agreement. This can only be achieved through compromise.
However, since June, BiH has moved no closer to initialling a Stabilisation and Association Agreement. Some political leaders have not honoured their previous commitments to meet EU requirements. These requirements must be fulfilled if the country is to conclude an SAA. BiH leaders should adopt a positive approach, based on full respect for the Dayton Peace Agreement and dialogue. The Mostar Declaration of 28 October can serve as the starting point for a positive reengagement of the government coalition parties. Concrete steps are now needed to demonstrate that this is a serious effort. If they follow-up, BiH would be able to progress towards conclusion of the SAA.
Given the lack of progress on key reforms, a focus on completing implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement, including efforts to tackle the evident dysfunctionality of state institutions, is necessary. The PIC Steering Board fully supports this approach.
The Steering Board of the Peace Implementation Council also supports the High Representative’s decisions and proposed actions, which are fully in line with his mandate and the Constitution of BiH. The only objective of these measures is to streamline the decision-making process in the Council of Ministers and the Parliament, and they are necessary for speeding up the reform process. Certain political leaders have overreacted to these measures in order to create a political crisis. They have also challenged the legitimacy and authority of the High Representative and Peace Implementation Council. In particular, the PIC Steering Board calls upon RS leaders to abide by their obligations [1].
The PIC welcomes the High Representative’s initiative to provide a note explaining that the measures maintain the constitutional protection of constituent peoples and Entities. We encourage RS legal experts to engage constructively with OHR legal experts on the explanatory note.
The PIC Steering Board reminds all signatories and parties of their obligation under Annex 10 of the Dayton Peace Agreement to cooperate fully with the High Representative and his staff. Decisions of the High Representative must be fully respected and promptly implemented.
The PIC Steering Board reiterates it will not remain passive in the face of provocative statements or acts. Any BiH political leaders or institutions that challenge the High Representative and the PIC Steering Board will be subject to appropriate measures. The Steering Board underlines that the international community retains the necessary instruments to counter destructive tendencies and that it will not allow attempts to undermine the Dayton Peace Agreement, whether from inside or outside the country.
The Steering Board underlined that BiH is a recognised sovereign state whose territorial integrity is guaranteed by the Dayton Peace Agreement. The Steering Board recalls that the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina recognises that Bosnia and Herzegovina consists of two entities and that Bosniacs, Croats and Serbs are constituent peoples. The Steering Board of the Peace Implementation Council remains committed to the principles on which the General Framework Agreement for Peace is founded and notes that the High Representative’s measures in no way change these principles.
The PIC Steering Board also re-emphasises its concern regarding suggestions that certain reforms could be reversed unilaterally by entity decisions retrieving competencies previously transferred to the state. An entity cannot withdraw unilaterally from a previously agreed reform. The consolidation of state-level institutions must continue.
In this context, the Steering Board deplores the lack of progress regarding the transfer from the entities to the state of all property needed for defence purposes as required by the Defence Law. The Steering Board stresses the urgent need to resolve this issue and requests the High Representative to engage with the parties and take appropriate measures to bring this issue to a conclusion by the end of the year.
The Steering Board also deplores the fact that state and entity authorities have failed to reach an agreement apportioning the ownership and use of state property, despite the strong appeal that they do so issued by Political Directors in June of this year. It reminds the three prime ministers of the urgent need to reach an inter-governmental agreement on this question and requests the High Representative to undertake all appropriate measures to bring this issue to a conclusion.
The Steering Board calls upon Serbia, a Dayton signatory, as well as the authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially those in Republika Srpska, to abide by their obligations under international law to cooperate fully with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), playing a proactive role in apprehending all remaining indictees, including Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, without further delay, dismantling the networks offering support to such fugitives, and ensuring they are transferred to the ICTY.
Also in that regard, the Steering Board welcomes the steps taken by the High Representative to augment the capacity of the BiH authorities to investigate and prosecute war crimes suspects.
The PIC Steering Board will review the situation at its next meeting in February 2008, which will take place in Brussels on 26 and 27 February 2008.
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[1]The Russian Federation expresses its special opinion regarding the measures of the High Representative.
The Russian Federation expresses its deepest concern by the consequences of the measures taken by the High Representative that change the procedures of the adoption of decisions by the Council of Ministers and the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH.
Taking into account the lack of agreement on these measures among the BiH leaders, the Russian Federation considers that the elaboration of the measures in a more stable environment would have been more productive. It is essential that the efficiency of BiH institutions be improved not in an atmosphere of growing tensions, but in a more stable context.
Bosnia: How Did It Get to This?
Today, we commonly hear both domestic politicians and international diplomats in Bosnia and Herzegovina that the country has entered a period of political crisis and instability that is the worst since the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement in late 1995. EUFOR Commander’s statement that, “EUFOR is ready to respond in case of a new war,” shows just how serious political
problems are. In order to predict how the current situation will play out in the short term and long term, it is important to look back at the genesis of the problem and clearly state some of the most important benchmarks.
First, it is important to realize that the current situation is not an exclusive fault of the current Bosnian Serb leadership. Many non-Serb domestic political leaders and intellectuals and foreign diplomats point at the RS Prime Minister Milorad Dodik as the principal villain in the current political strife because of his refusal to pass police
reform and other reforms that would bring Bosnia and Herzegovina closer to EU integration and because of his ultra-nationalist and, at times, secessionist rhetoric that is reminiscent of Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic in the early 1990s. Most recently, Dodik has threatened to withdraw all RS representatives from Bosnia’s joint
legislative and executive bodies (and, effectively shut down the government) as a protest to measures imposed by the International Community that are meant to make the work of the state government more efficient. RS deemed these measures unconstitutional and unacceptable. In order to display the popularity of his words and actions, Dodik organized relatively small, peaceful demonstrations throughout RS in which citizens voiced their support for his policies.
It is, therefore, very tempting to think that Dodik is at the root of the current political problem. If one believes in this premise, it would seem logical that Dodik’s removal by the High Representative would solve the problem. This would have been true a year ago; Dodik’s dismissal from the post would have sent a clear message that the International Community was firmly in control over the situation on the ground. However, today such an action would only exacerbate problems and lead to further radicalization of the Bosnian Serb population. Instead, Dodik’s politics should be viewed as the logical step in the evolution of
the Serbian national politics that started with Milosevic in the late 1980s. In other words, the Dayton Peace Agreement has merely delayed the execution of a plan to tear Bosnia along ethnic lines, leading to the addition of the “Bosnian Serb territories” (legitimized by Dayton as
Republika Srpska) to Serbia proper. Given that Serbia is facing an inevitable loss of Kosovo, the plan to replace some of the lost territories is given even more priority - both in order to soften popular anger about the loss of Kosovo, and to create a Serbian super-state that would encompass all Serbs into a single state, which has been the strategic goal since the 1980s. In this context, Dodik
should be viewed as merely a man who was in power when the time arrived to execute this stage of the plan. His removal, outside a wider political strategy for Western Balkans, would be disastrous at this time.
For the past twelve years, RS has greatly evolved politically and economically. Large-scale returns of non-Serb population to RS did not happen, and, as a result, RS is nearly ethnically pure entity (which translates into no organized political, and more importantly, military
opposition to secessionist plans). At the same time, all of the RS leaders have led careful political strategy that aimed at strengthening RS institutions while rendering Bosnia’s state institutions weak and ineffective (and, as a result, illegitimate). The goal was to build a political,
economic and security infrastructure that would make the eventual secession from the rest of the country as easy as possible when time comes. This plan has succeeded brilliantly.
The non-Serb political leadership has been completely oblivious to what has been going on in RS, using their positions of power in the Federation BiH and state institutions for nothing more than personal and financial gain. Not a single Bosniak political leader or a party has formulated a strategy that would make the state stronger and more self-reliable. Aside from the catchy pre-election slogans like “100% Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Bosniak parties have shown no creativity in proposing constitutional, economic and other reforms. In other words, during the post-war period, Bosniak and Bosnian-Croat parties have displayed a dismaying amount of political immaturity and incompetence (and complete intellectual and political inferiority to their RS counterparts) and have greatly contributed to the present political quagmire.
The burden of keeping Bosnia and Herzegovina functioning fell on the shoulders of the International Community. International Community has played a key role in bringing the 1992-1995 war to an end, reaching a
political agreement in Dayton and implementing peace both militarily and politically in the period after the war. If it were not for the International Community’s insistence on certain reforms, Bosnia and Herzegovina would not have a single currency, would not have unified vehicle license plates (which are key for safe travel through the
country), would not have a unified customs and border control agency, etc. The list could go on and on.
Given these artificial and imposed reforms, many non-Serb political parties and remaining International Community factors have become complacent into thinking that Bosnia was on an “automatic pilot” to becoming a more functioning state, on the way to joining EU and NATO,
which would eventually lead to a complete self-sufficiency. As a result, the previous international High Representative (Christian Schwarz-Schilling) insisted on a policy that the domestic political factors reach key agreements without the international interference. The strategy failed miserably, creating series of mini crises over policies and ushering the way for the current political showdown.
At the same time, EUFOR and NATO (two international military peacekeeping missions in the country) have steadily reduced their numbers and closed down all camps except for the Headquarters camp near Sarajevo.
Reduced military capability has resulted into a more brazen political challenge by the RS leadership. Despite EUFOR commander’s statement that they are ready to intervene in the case of renewed violence, RS leadership knows very well that if it comes down to RS secession, under the current international force posture, there would be no domestic or foreign military intervention against them.
Bottom line: the belief that Serbia and their protégés in Bosnia have accepted Bosnia as the end result and have given up hopes of creating a state that would bring all Serbs in the Balkans under one state roof, has been the single greatest miscalculation by both the domestic non-Serb political leaders and the International Community. Today, we are living through the consequences of that strategic blunder.
What Happens Next? - A Likely Scenario
The current situation is such that the RS leadership has all the initiative and is, in effect, controlling the political and security developments in the country. The RS national assembly has nominally declared the latest OHR’s measures as overstepping his authority and putting the Bosnian Serbs on an unequal footing with Bosniaks and Bosnian-Croats in the state institutions. Aside from declaring their
displeasure with OHR’s measures, they have not yet announced concrete steps to counter them. The RS Assembly, as well as the RS government,
is taking a break from making decisions on further actions until the international Peace Implementation Council (a body that gives OHR its mandate and creates a broad political strategy for OHR) finishes their meetings in Sarajevo this week.
If PIC decides to completely support OHR, as expected, the RS leadership will most likely answer by withdrawing the Bosnian-Serb representatives in the state legislative and executive bodies, and incapacitate the state government, leading to a further deterioration of the political and security situation. That action would be a cause for
further OHR measures, and this would be met by large-scale demonstrations and civil disobedience in RS, which is the situation that Dodik and his coaches in Belgrade are trying to reach. Last Monday’s demonstrations were simply a small-scale dress rehearsal for larger and wider events, but their message was clear.
Just about any OHR’s decision, aside from completely reversing their own measures, would lead to popular unrest in RS. Given that the international community has staked its reputation on their ability to oversee peace implementation in Bosnia, it is unreasonable to
expect them to simply reverse their measures and give in to Dodik in order to avert bigger mess. Therefore, by all accounts, it is very likely that Bosnia and Herzegovina is entering a period of not only severe political turmoil, but also civil unrest, insecurity for minorities (Bosniak returnees to RS) and complete failure of the state
government.
In the ensuing chaos, the RS leadership will most likely take measures to effectively run RS separately from the rest of the country (much like the Slovenians did when they declared independence from former Yugoslavia). A referendum for the RS autonomy would give their actions
an appearance of democratic and popular legitimacy. Despite the domestic and international protests, there would be no actual intervention aimed at preventing RS from a de facto secession. Serbia would react by shrewdly giving lip service to Bosnia’s territorial integrity, in order to void international condemnation and sanctions. There would be no rush with integration of RS into Serbia. Meanwhile, Belgrade would provide complete financial assistance to Banjaluka in the face of the international reaction that would most likely include a package of sanctions against RS. Despite all reactions, RS would complete the
secession, which would be virtually impossible to reverse later. At best, a political deal (Dayton 2 perhaps) based on a new reality on the ground, would be reached giving RS a complete autonomy in a confederative type of
arrangement with Sarajevo, with the guaranteed right to vote regarding its destiny a few years later (as in Serbia-Montenegro model prior to Montenegro’s final vote on breakup with Serbia).
Endgame
This scenario may seem pessimistic, but it is based on the previous political experience in regards to Serbian strategic goals which seem to be entrenched in a cultural belief that assumes that all Serbs must live in a single state, and that they must be in a complete, sovereign control of the space in which they reside if non-Serbs occupy the same
space. The collateral damage of this belief translated into political action, are the neighboring non-Serb populations and the administrative units (Bosnia as a state) where power is shared between Serbs and non-Serbs.
Understanding this cultural-political concept is the key in formulating a strategy to countering it if that is the policy in order to save the Bosnian statehood and territorial integrity. The International Community has lost time, and with time, political options for effectively countering the RS secessionist drive. Today, those options must include severe political and economic pressures on both Banja Luka and Belgrade (because they are two sides of the same problem) backed by a clear, displayable show of force to RS. It is not too early to start thinking about preparing military increases to EUFOR and NATO.
But most importantly, it would be prudent to organize a regional political conference (much like Dayton) where the future of Bosnia, and its internal structure that is rendering it unworkable at this time, would be decided for good. A solid plan that includes constitutional reform of the country, backed by Zagreb, Belgrade, US and EU would save Bosnia and Herzegovina from certain disintegration and would automatically bring it closer to joining the European community of nations as a stable country with equal rights for all its peoples.
Come back soon for some Balkan goodness.
