Bosnia after 15 years of Dayton

The main participants to the conflict were Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, Croatian President Franjo Tudman and Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic with Bosnian Foreign Minister Muhamed Sacirbegovic.

After intense and difficult negotiations, the conference ended on Nov. 21, 1995, with the initialing of a peace accord, which was later formally signed in Paris on Dec. 14, 1995.

The peace accord divided Bosnia politically into two parts: a Serb entity called the Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation. It also envisaged political, economic and administrative reforms and arrangements to promote the unity and functionality of two parts in a wider context.

Until 2006, mostly due to outside pressure, Bosnia slowly became more functional. However, since then, progress towards more functionality has halted because of disputes between the parties on many key issues, chief among them the extent of the central state’s authority and mandate. In this respect, Bosniaks want a more centralized state with powers of enforcement, while Serbs in Republika Srpska aim for more autonomy, or even full independence, which was put forward several times by their leader, Milorad Dodik. The Croats, on the other hand, wish to consolidate and institutionalize the territories they control into an entity of their own rather than remaining part of the joint Bosniak-Croat Federation, which they reluctantly agreed to in the peace accord in the first place.

The political positions the parties still hold 15 years after the accord was signed are as they were. There does not seems much of an opportunity for them to go further unless, of course, they are persuaded to move forward by the big powers, which have invested so much political and economic capital to make Bosnia a stable and functioning country to be anchored strongly in the European Union and NATO, thereby preventing any sort of resumption of the bloody conflict of 15 years ago.

Well, the big powers decided last month to act and initiated a diplomatic effort to reinvigorate a stalled constitutional reform process together with Bosnia’s integration into the EU and NATO, and also promoting the fulfillment of remaining conditions for the closure of the Office of the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina (OHR), currently headed by Valentin Inzko.

The big powers involved in the current initiative are of course the US and the EU. The first is represented by Jim Steinberg of the State Department and the second by Ollie Rehn, the EU enlargement commissioner. The initiative is led by Bildt, the Swedish foreign minister and a former head of the OHR. Bildt has expended much effort and energy to rehabilitate Bosnia since the Dayton Accords.

The initiative, which comprised two meetings with the parties involved in Sarajevo, ended last month without any tangible result. However, despite this, a third round will be held this month with some degree of hope that the deadlock between the parties might be broken with enough pressure. Let us hope this happens and that Bosnia, 15 years after the peace accord, can finally move toward political reform and reconciliation. If that does not happen, the country will continue to be a major and serious problem for Europe for many years to come. It will remain in a state of paralysis, as Inzko aptly pointed out recently.