After the fall of Saddam Hussein’s statue, arguably the most iconic image of the Iraq conflict is that of President Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Hubris has often proved a close companion to international intervention – and never more so than when it comes to announcing success and losing interest too early.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the rather few international interventions which we can point to as successful and the only one – so far -which has been both US led and conducted in a country in which Muslims form the largest proportion of the population.
I say “so far”, not because the field is crowded with others heading in the same direction – but because Bosnia’s success is not yet assured and can still be lost if the international community takes its eye off the ball too early. Which I fear is what some of the Western capitals most engaged in Bosnia’s reconstruction, are in danger of doing.
Troop numbers in the country are now dropping fast. And that is right. Peace has returned to Bosnia; 1 million refugees have gone home; two armies, three intelligence services and two customs services have all been welded into single state institutions; a broadly effective state government, funded by a single VAT taxation system, has been established; all three ethnicities are cohabiting peacefully if not yet co-operating enthusiastically and the Bosnian economy is now growing sustainably, albeit from a very low base.
The soldiers were there to stabilise the peace and their job is now largely done.
But that of the international politicians, charged with creating a sustainable state has not.
Below the level of state institutions, the Dayton Agreement monster with its thirteen Prime Ministers and mini governments for a country of 3.5 million, still exists. The US led attempt to reform this dysfunctional muddle of interlocking bureaucracies failed last year, chiefly I believe, because the European Union was not prepared to make constitutional reform a condition for EU membership. Now the predominantly Serb entity, Republika Srpska, emboldened by the international community’s concentration on Kosovo and apparent nervousness about offending Belgrade, is seeking to reverse some of the key state reforms of recent years. NATO is perceived in both Belgrade and Banja Luka, to have relaxed its conditions on the capture of Karadzic and Mladic as a price for membership of its Partnership for Peace and these two primary architects of the Bosnian atrocities now look, if anything, further away from justice than ever. Meanwhile, the final but essential stone in creating the edifice of State institutions, police reform, is in danger of descending into a series of Potemkin compromises which will hobble the country’s capacity to ensure its own rule of law, long into the future.
Bosnia is held on the road to reform by the magnetic “pull” of the Brussels institutions (NATO and the EU) and the tough “push” of the power of sanction vested in the High Representative by the Dayton Agreement. In the last year the first has visibly weakened as European capitals have become more sceptical about further enlargement and the latter has all but vanished. And the consequence has been that local politicians have felt free to return to old habits, rather than grasping new opportunities. The forces of radical Islam are showing renewed interest in the country, having been comprehensively rebuffed by the determined moderation of Bosnian Muslims in the past. At best Bosnia’s remarkable progress these ten years has come to a juddering halt; at worst things are actually beginning to go back wards. The danger here is not a return to conflict – that is now well nigh impossible with a massively downsized single state army. The danger is that the opportunity to finish the job and create a sustainable EU standard state is being lost and Bosnia will be left as a dysfunctional space which we do not have the will to reform, but cannot afford to ignore.
The problem of Kosovo will neither be easy to solve nor, comfortable to cope with in the short term. But in the long term, Bosnia is the fulcrum of peace in the Balkans. Compromising on standards in Bosnia in the hope of achieving a quiet life in Belgrade will cost us much more in Bosnian dysfunctionality and an unanchored peace in the future. The international community – and especially Washington and Brussels, need to be much clearer about the standards they seek and, especially in the case of the EU, more muscular in exercising conditionality in order to achieve it
Success in this remarkable little country is within our reach – but it is not yet within our grasp. A new High Representative will soon be appointed in Bosnia. It is vital that he or she arrives with a clear plan and the full backing of international capitals to carry it through and finish the job.
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