American-European and regional gambling with Bosnia
by Hajrudin Somun*

This time around, however, no one involved or interested in developments in the Balkans can look indifferently at what is happening in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is entering the second decade of the 21st century with almost the same problems as it had when it entered the last decade of the previous century. The only significant difference is that this time everything but a new war is possible.

First, more than three months after general elections, it is still not certain if in the next three months a central government capable of making necessary reforms will be formed. In the meantime, 12 other governments should be formed. Yes, it is never enough to repeat: The country, home to less than 4 million people, has 13 constitutions, 13 parliaments and 13 governments. However complicated and irrational, such a state structure, created as part of the Dayton Peace Agreement in 1995, could perhaps survive if it were not founded on the principle of ethnicity.

The country’s constitution, prepared in Dayton, left to the central government almost symbolic authorities and legitimized the territorial division achieved by ethnic cleansing and genocide. Bosnia and Herzegovina was even deprived of its attribute “republic,” which was awarded to one of its two entities, Republika Srpska, founded and still controlled and ruled by nationalist Bosnian Serbs today.

The other half of the country was “awarded” the so-called BH Federation, which is divided into 10 cantons and mostly inhabited by Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) and Croats. A good part of them was driven away from the homes they had in today’s Republika Srpska. Before the war in 1992, what is today Republika Srpska was 46 percent Bosniak and Croat. Today, this figure is a mere 8 percent.

Many Croats went to Croatia, but most Bosniaks went into the diaspora or found shelter in the BH Federation -- and especially around its capital, Sarajevo. Ordered by their nationalistic leadership, most Bosnian Serbs left and later sold their properties and homes they lived in for centuries in regions belonging today to the BH Federation, and particularly in Sarajevo. The situation is similar with Bosnian Croats, whose nationalistic leaders requested they move out to parts of the country considered exclusively Croat.

Without these figures it is not easy to understand why Bosnian Serbs so passionately defend the country’s ethnically schemed politics institutionalized by the Dayton constitution and why their leader, Milorad Dodik, says Sarajevo is another Tehran. Two political blocks, the first of which consists primarily of Serbs and the second of Bosniaks and Croats, have been solidifying the ethnic division of the country over the last 15 years and winning one election after another.

The SNSD and SDS

As for the leading parties from the first block, with a more or less radical nationalist program, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) led by Dodik and the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) formed by Radovan Karadzic are the most important players making Bosnia and Herzegovina weaker and Republika Srpska stronger until possible secession. For the leading Bosniak parties, the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) established by the late Alija Izetbegovic and now led by Sulejman Tihic and the Party for Bosnia and Herzegovina (SBH) led by Haris Silajdzic seek to preserve the unity of Bosnia and bring it closer to Euro-Atlantic integrations as their main goal.

The majority of Croats permanently vote for the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HDZ BiH), which split a few years ago, but don’t abandon the goal of having a Croat national entity as well. HDZ BiH leader Dragan Covic does not hide his alliance with Dodik. The social democrats, led by Zlatko Lagumdzija, pretend not to belong to any of the two blocks. Their party, the Social Democratic Party (SDP), is more civic and less nationally aligned, although the overwhelming majority of its members are Bosniaks.

While the other mentioned parties might be ranked by Western standards as center-right, the SDP could be seen as more center-left. It scored a double victory at the Oct. 3, 2010 elections: a majority in the BH Federation and cantons, and the election of its candidate, Zeljko Komsic, for a second term as the Croat member of the tripartite state presidency.

There is almost no possibility of seeing a coalition between the various blocks and parties, which oppose and, on crucial issues, are even antagonistic to one another. It is easier to form governments on the entity level, with an already settled SNSD-SDS coalition in Republika Srpska and probably an SDP-SDA-HDZ agreement in the BH Federation. The best that can be achieved on the state level is a “partnership rule,” which was the case in all post-Dayton years but that did not bring any progress to the country. “Such a partnership formula,” writes Professor Mirko Pejanovic, one of the staunchest anti-nationalistic Bosnian Serb politicians, “is antidemocratic in a multiparty parliamentary system” and “reduces the power of the Bosnian parties to the power of party leaders.”

Here we come to the core of the Bosnian internal political impasse. The present party leaders and an army of their obedient followers -- around 200 ministers, at least -- will use entity voting to block parliament and do their best to prolong their “technical mandate” and obstruct the formation of an effective central government. Let us put aside that “human factor,” especially characteristic of men, in trying to get and preserve once-achieved political power. I cannot resist, however, quoting Francis Bacon’s words, which might reflect the status quo, if not a retrograde, of actual Bosnian politics. In 1625 he wrote, “So ambitious men, if they find the way open for their rising, and still get forward, they are rather busy than dangerous, but if they be checked in their desires, they become secretly discontent, and look upon men and matters with an evil eye, and are best pleased when things go backward.”

In another contemporary reflection of Bacon’s words, we can also say that many Bosnian politicians are not immune to corruption and only in the present political structure can ensure they are not legally prosecuted for involvement in scandals, a situation opposite to that in Croatia and several other countries in the region. Others have already said politics in Bosnia is about power and profit rather than ethnic animosity.

For my concluding remarks, I left the behavior of the international community in dealing with the actual Bosnian situation, though it should have a decisive role. It is easy to say, as everyone has been, “Let the Bosnian politicians agree on a functional government!” That same international community, headed by the US, stopped the war in Bosnia, but imposed a legal framework that made the whole country dysfunctional and led it to the edge of division.

In fact, it has become more and more clear that a crippled state was created by the Dayton Agreement. It would have been completely divided by now had there been no intervention by foreign supervisors, or heads of the Office of the High Representative (OHR) of the international community in the country. They helped ensure Bosnia had such banal things for normal states as unified passports, ID cards and license plates. Had this not been the case, Republika Srpska could have proclaimed independence perhaps before Abkhazia. Thus, the country cannot be governed functionally and nor further align with European Union norms without serious constitutional reforms. However, the Dayton constitution cannot be changed without the direct involvement of those who created it in the first place. More specifically, it cannot be done without the Americans.

A great concern prevalent, increasing in these first days of January, is that the Americans are leaving Bosnia to the mercy of the Europeans. The powerful International Crisis Group (ICG) called on EU member states to make 2011 “the year when the lead international role in Bosnia and Herzegovina shifts from the OHR to a reinforced EU delegation.” This is exactly what Dodik is asking all foreigners to do, but most of all the Americans: to leave Bosnia. The international community’s supervision, or mandate, will be reduced to the issue of EU membership, but without executive authority for the EU representative.

Bosnia without Americans

Daniel Serwer, the vice president of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), replied immediately to this ICG statement, saying that “it urges a kind of unilateral coup by the EU.” He says he doubts Europe can deal with Bosnia without the Americans. The ICG “simply ignores Milorad Dodik’s many threats to take Republika Srpska in the direction of independence,” he says and adds that his “own worst fear is that Europe, left to its confused devices, will begin to de facto negotiate EU membership separately with Republika Srpska.”

Almost at the same time closer, but not less serious concerns are felt by all those who like to see Bosnia progressing unhampered and united. Ivo Banac, a prominent historian from Zagreb, began a harsh polemic with Croatian President Ivo Josipovic, condemning him for his frequent meetings with Serbian President Boris Tadic and saying they might be taking place at the expense of Bosnia and Herzegovina, just as their predecessors, Franjo Tudjman and Slobodan Milosevic, did two decades ago.

He thinks “regional cooperation” cannot necessarily be considered positive. President Josipovic strongly denied any such accusations, but Vildana Selimbegovic, editor-in-chief of the leading Bosnian Oslobodjenje daily, said in her column: “All diplomacy notwithstanding, Croatia has seriously become involved in Bosnia’s internal affairs. Because Serbia never really stopped interfering, good neighborly relations in the region can be defined as follows: Bosnia and Herzegovina will have the full support of Tadic and Josipovic the moment it is ruled by Dodik and Covic. Using this logic, Bosniaks have no other choice than for Lagumdzija and Tihic to turn towards ‘mother’ Turkey.”

Serwer’s warning is, however, more serious and almost dramatic. The next move should be made by someone from the Obama administration, which is, without doubt, too busy with problems much more urgent than to gamble with Europeans about Bosnia. It should, however, hear many Bosnians who agree with Serwer when he says that “Bosnia still needs the US as well as Europe.” I would add that Bosnia might not have survived 1995 had it at the time been left to the mercy of the Europeans.