Debate on Bosnia Fatigue: A Response to Kurt Bassuener

Kurt Bassuener from the Democratization Policy Council recently published the following response to Rosa Balfour and my commentary in the European Voice:

In their commentary entitled “Bosnia fatigue, and how to deal with it” (22-28 April), Rosa Balfour and Florian Bieber recognise that the EU lacks a strategy toward Bosnia and that this has resulted in policy failures such as last year’s ‘Butmir process’ – when the EU and the US sought to persuade Bosnian leaders to accept a ‘package’ of reforms necessary for deeper Euro-Atlantic integration – and the deep deterioration of the situation in recent years. Yet they fail to recognise why Bosnia is backsliding, or to propose a feasible way to arrest that slide.
Bosnia is dysfunctional because its governance was designed as a political lifesupport system for its signatories, rather than to provide for truly democratic accountability. Those who benefit have little incentive to change a system that may not work, but works for them. One can make the case for incremental change, but this is feasible only if the rules under which this occurs are predictable well into the future. That would require the EU to have an open-ended timeline. However, the EU’s current policy is based on a logical impossibility – incremental change with a short timeline and radical curtailment of international responsibility.
The EU institutions, and many of its members, state robotically that Bosnia cannot advance toward EU membership with the office of high representative (OHR) still in existence, an odd assertion given that the EU signed a stabilisation and association agreement with Bosnia with the OHR still in place. Without much deeper changes than those on the table, a Bosnia based on the Dayton agreement cannot function shorn of the enforcement mechanisms that are integral to it – an executive OHR and an EU peacekeeping force (EUFOR) empowered under chapter VII of the UN charter. The drive toward ‘transition’ to a still-undefined non-executive EU presence has helped encourage dangerous adventurism by the prime minister of the Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, and corresponding fear and uncertainty throughout Bosnia.
Those with unfulfilled agendas perceive no resistance when they fail to comply with the Dayton rules or even call the state’s future into question. The EU policies have failed to deter; indeed, ‘deterrence’ seems absent from the EU’s lexicon.  Before Bosnians go to the polls in October, the EU, in conjunction with its non-EU Western partners such as the US and Turkey, could easily alleviate this perception that rules are being ignored.
First, EUFOR should deploy one of its mobile units to the autonomous district of Brcko, which links the two halves of the Republika Srpska, thereby rendering untenable proposals that the entity should break away.  Second, the EU, the US and other members of the Peace Implementation Council should state that as long as the Bosnian constitution contained in the Dayton agreement remains in force, its enforcement mechanisms will remain in place. The current policy has led Dodik to believe it is feasible  to have Dayton à la carte.
Bosnian citizens must be reassured that their country will not be allowed to collapse and that changes to the constitution (which are much-needed) will have to be broadly acceptable to them. Finally, the EU should rethink its pre-election communications strategy, which, since there is no overarching political strategy with which it is integrated, can be summed up as: “the EU is good for you – trust us.” Instead, the EU should pursue a public information course that would build up the EU’s currently feeble public credibility by spelling out the considerable realtime costs to citizens of their politicians’ foot-dragging on the ‘European path’. This would be a real public service in advance of the general elections in October.

Kurt Bassuener
Senior associate, Democratization Policy Council

I very much appreciated Kurt’s insightful response. While our recommendations and suggestions are often different, the assessment of the fundamental problems is similar. I guess one difference would be that I am less convinced than Kurt about Dodik’s desire to dismantle Bosnia. However, I would agree that Dodik’s ‘Dayton a la carte’ is equally troubling  (of course the OHR has also promoted Dayton a la carte, just in a different directions). When it comes to Bosnian governance, I am not sure that the constitution or its institutions are as problematic as Kurt suggests–the fundamental change to the political and constitutional system he suggestions is a) not feasible and b) unlikely to change the political dynamic sufficiently.  Of course the institutional set-up is sub-optimal and in need for reform, but as I have argued elsewhere (including on my blog), veto rights, autonomy and power-sharing will remain and will continue to offer political elites the option to sabotage the joint institutions.

Where I agree with Kurt is the suggestion to have a mobile EUFOR unit stationed in Brcko–it is here were Bosnia is held together. I would add a proposal to move some state institutions to Brcko.  I furthermore agree with Kurt that the EU needs to more effective in communicating why the integration process has been slow and pointing some fingers in public. As Kurt’s comment suggests, there is much which needs to be done by the EU.

One of the aspects which we did not raise in the commentary for reasons of brevity is the need for the EU to conceptualize a clear post-OHR strategy. There is no clear and reassuring plan on who would take over and it would be very important to acknowledge that there will be a need for continued external arbitration and intervention after the closure of the OHR (just like Northern Ireland has mechanisms for outside arbitration and mediation).

In brief, there is a fruitful debate to be had on these issues–let’s hope that the EU is listening.

The Magical Mirror in Bosnia: The Serb Republic and the Burqa

Republika Srpska steps up to a magical mirror and asks: Mirror, mirror on the wall–which is the prettiest place of them all?

The mirror answers: You have destroyed minarets where the most democratic country in Europe, Switzerland, just banned them. You are planning to ban the burqa like the most civic country in Europe, France. And you are disregarding judgments by the European Court of European Rights, just like the heart of Europe, Belgium.

This might make you not the prettiest place, but it makes you very European.

This is why Milorad Dodik is suggesting by proposing such as ban as a European standard: “Such law has been adopted in several European countries and we believe that we need to get closer to these European standards.” It is easy to dismiss this proposal as another incidiary pre-election play of Dodik’s party to polarize and mobilize, but also holds a mirror up to the rest of Europe.  It burqas are banned in Belgium and France, minarets in Switzerland, how different is the nationalist intolerance promote by Dodik and others in BiH?  While there are obvious differences between the RS and Belgium in the fact that Islam is a long-established in the latter and not in the former and that prior to 1991 a third or more of the inhabitants of the RS were Muslims. Even if burqas have not been worn and are worn only by few anywhere in Bosnia, burqas are not fundamentally alien to Bosnia. I doubt though that Dodik wants to be the Atatürk of Bosnia or that wearing burqas in the RS is both wide-spread or that it takes a ban to make wearers feel not welcome. Thus, in addition to proposing an illiberal solution to an arguably often illiberal expression of faith, it is about as provocative as a suggesting in Northern Ireland that religions involved in child abuse should be banned.

The fact that the burqa ban is getting support form such (un)expected quarters should give Sarkozy and the Belgium authorities some food for thought.

Fixing the Institutions will not Fix Bosnia: To Butmir or not to butt mir

Convening Bosnia’s political leaders in an EUFOR base outside of Sarajevo is not only reminiscent of Dayton where Tudjman, Izetbegovic and Milosevic were ‘impressed’ by a US air force base in Ohio, but also of an ill-fated session of the Yugoslav presidency in Spring 1991. The Yugoslav People’s Army in an effort to persuade the Yugoslav leadership to declare a state of emergency convened the meeting in an army barracks in Belgrade. However, its show of force failed and the Bosnian representative of the presidency, Bogic Bogicevic case the crucial vote against the army intervention.

Of course, unlike the JNA in 1991, EUFOR and the EU wants to disengage, rather than engage, so the differences begin here. The sense of crisis is similar, and palpable. Observers and politicians from different background and with diverging interests keep emphasizing the crisis Bosnia finds itself in—only the depth of the crisis appears to be a matter of debate.

Many commentators mistakenly identify the institutions as the prime problem of Bosnia. The complicated institutional set-up with veto rights, ‘vital national interests’ and entity voting appears to block reform at every turn of the corner. Looking at the unwieldy reality and the frequent stalemates in Bosnia’s institutions, it is tempting to see all ills in the Dayton institutions. Nevertheless, this analysis is plain wrong. True, the institutions are flawed and cost too much. They are not the core of the political crisis. Instead, badly conceived and impatient efforts to change them have been to blame for the crisis Bosnia finds itself in.

So why are institutions not the biggest problem? No matter of how many or little veto rights there are in Bosnia, it will be impossible to impose a decision on either entity without its at least tacit consent (or agreement to disagree). Even if entity voting (the ability of each entity’s MPs to block decision in Bosnian parliament) where to be abolished, a walk out by MPs could still stop decisions from being taken. If a decision against the will of one entity were taken, this would hardly lead to its acceptance in the entity in question and would further antagonize relations. Reducing opportunities for blockage are likely to make the decision making process smoother, but it will also increase the temptation to outvote the non-dominant communities. If one were to find issue with the institutions, it is less with the details of decision making, number of MPs, but with the larger institutional set-up, which pits two entities (and the two dominant nations) in a binary zero-sum game against one another. However, this element of post-Dayton Bosnia is not on the agenda as it is too controversial and contentious to touch.

The reason the constitutional talks, first in 2006 (that ended in failure) and the Butmir talks now, have a negative impact on the political climate. The current Butmir talks convey a sense of crisis and ‘last chance’ which does not only build pressure on elites to compromise, but also reinforces a sense of ‘everything is falling apart’ which has a way to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Opening constitutional questions in such a dramatic way also is what lager parts of the elite like—it is these big issues which lend themselves so much more to defending national interests, than everyday boring politics. Furthermore, the EU and the US have no clear carrot and stick in this process. The only carrot (for some, i.e. Dodik) is the closure of the OHR, but it is also a stick for others (SDA, SBiH). Beyond this, the EU has not been able to offer anything which would be persuasive to compromise.

All this does not suggest that Bosnia does not need constitutional reform. However, this should not be hammered out in EUFOR basis in emergency-style meetings. Constitutional change has to be a gradual process which is not understood as a short term initiative. There is little beyond the obvious violations of the European Convention of Human Rights which needs to be changed with any urgency in the constitution. More important is that some constitutional changes lead to (re-)building a basic consensus one some key features of the Bosnian state. Such a process deserves the support of the EU.