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Books on Bosnia & Herzegovina
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Update No: 127 - (19/12/07)
The knock-on effect
Events in Serbia, or to be more explicit, Kosovo, could have profound
repercussions for Bosnia. If, as now looks inevitable, the Albanian Kosovars go
independent from Belgrade, the Bosnian Serbs could insist that they should
secede from Bosnia, leaving a rump Croatian-Muslim republic behind. We have been
warning of this continually and the situation is exacerbated by Russia’s
posturte which is making heavier and heavier hints that if Kosovo declares
unilateral independence so also may its puppet enclaves unrecognised republics
– two in Georgia and one in Moldova. Plus the Republika Srbska who are
desperate to join Serbia.
This unilateral declaration of independence is more than a possibility; it is a
probability, unless the international community acts decisively. The omens augur
a dismemberment of the Bosnian confederation soon, unless there is outside
intervention. The current International High Representative, Miroslav Lajcak, is
a Slovak, coming from a state, Slovakia, that seceded itself in 1993 from the
Czechs in Czechoslovakia, although this was a negotiated outcome. Who is he to
argue that geopolitical boundaries are fixed forever and are immutable -
although he would more likely point to the Dayton agreements and the rule of
law.
A mounting crisis
Political tensions had been simmering at least since the pre-election campaign
in 2006. They reached a climax with the October failure to find agreement on
police reform - the Bosnian Serbs just won’t have a Bosnian national police
force which they don’t control. This is a major irritant in both internal and
external relations, indeed a blockage to nationhood, and with Lajcak's
subsequent decision to unilaterally introduce changes to decision-making
procedures at state level. Politicians from Republika Srbska were united in
rejecting Lajcak’s moves on the grounds that they would allow the Serbs to be
outvoted by the other two constituencies in Bosnia’s ethnic triad. The Serb
entity’s Prime Minister Milorad Dodik warned that his party would encourage
withdrawals from executive and legislative positions at state level unless
Lajcak’s decisions were modified. The subsequent standoff between the Bosnian
Serbs and Lajcak raised tensions tangibly.
Fear seemed to be taking root at an alarming pace, and people were reported to
be hoarding food supplies. On 13 November, Social Democratic Party leader Zlatko
Lagumdzija declared in the Bosnian parliament, “People are afraid of going
back to 1992. Parliament should tell them that there is no reason, that there
will not be a war here ever again. … The result of all this is that whether
there will be a war has become a natural question.”
Zdravko Grebo, a prominent intellectual at Sarajevo University, confided to the
media that Bosnia “is counting its last days.” International diplomats’
repeated denials of any link between Kosovo and Bosnia failed to reassure or
convince. On 16 November, Dodik reportedly said, “The independence of Kosovo
is surely going to influence the establishing of a new public opinion in
Republika Srpska, and nobody is going to be able to stop this. … It is
impossible for Serbia to give up one part of its territory just like that,
without any.… not to say, concessions.”
The EU steps in
All of this made the Europeans sit up. They know that they made a terrible
mistake in the early 1990s by letting events take their course in the Balkans,
which meant wars galore. The EU and its various capitals have, indeed, been
active of late. A strong improvement across Bosnia and Herzegovina took place in
the first week of December. The Bosnian political elites and the international
community’s high representative called off the political crisis that had only
weeks before re-kindled fears of a new violent conflict. The ice began to crack
on 30 November when the Bosnian parliament adopted new rules of procedure as
required by High Representative Lajcak. On 3 December Lajcak gave in to some
Bosnian Serb demands to modify his own October amendments to the law on
Bosnia’s central government.
To top off this string of better news, the European Union’s enlargement
commissioner, Olli Rehn, went to Sarajevo on 4 December to initial the document
that clears the way for Bosnia’s closer integration into the union, even
though there had been scant progress in areas where the EU had previously
insisted on Bosnia’s bending to its will. All of a sudden, talk of war was
replaced by talk of EU membership. But, the outcome of Kosovo will emerge very
soon, when all the cards will lie face up on the table.
A breathing space
There is a short space of time for any opportunity to change the antagonistic
political dynamic in Bosnia. However, unless domestic authorities and Bosnia’s
international overseers alike learn lessons, new crises are bound to reappear,
perhaps quite soon. Kosovo is steering ever closer to a unilateral declaration
of independence, and despite their assertions to the contrary, Western states’
recognition of that act is bound to put additional long-term strains on the
tenuous territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
It will require great statesmanship to prevent a debacle. One elder statesman,
whose advice would be invaluable here is Lord Ashdown, a former International
High Representive himself. Another is Richard Holbrooke, the author of the
Dayton Agreement in 1995. Yet a third would be former Russian premier, Viktor
Chernomyrdin, who brokered the peace in 1999. The UK, the US and the USSR, the
big three that won the Second World War, could bequeath a victory of another
sort in Bosnia, should there be a troika of the three of them to advise Lojcak.
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