Bosnian Security after Dayton: New Perspectives (Contemporary Security Studies)

BOSNIAN SECURITY AFTER DAYTON This edited volume considers a varied range of post-war, post-Dayton and post9/11 proble...

Author: Michael Innes

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BOSNIAN SECURITY AFTER DAYTON

This edited volume considers a varied range of post-war, post-Dayton and post9/11 problems and issues, reminding readers that Dayton is not the only challenge to the safety, stability, and long-term viability of the post-war Bosnian state. Drawing together the latest research, it covers new ground in its discussion of contemporary security and terror concerns. Bosnian Security after Dayton is a comprehensive, up-to-date examination of Bosnian security issues. It takes Bosnia-Herzegovina seriously as a subject of regional and international affairs. Redeﬁned global security concerns have heavily altered international and domestic priorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, with corresponding implications for foreign intervention, ethnic partition and power-sharing, security sector reform, and state-level capacity building. This suggests the need to move scholarship on Bosnia-Herzegovina out into the world of modern states and complex threats to collective security. Featuring essays by both academic experts and practitioners, this book will be a useful resource for professionals working in the ﬁeld, and will be of great interest to students of peace-building and post-conﬂict reconstruction, legacies of war and ethnic cleansing, European politics and security studies in general. Michael A. Innes is currently Visiting Research Fellow, School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds. He spent several years as a ﬁeldbased analyst in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and has been an Associate Fellow of the Centre for Developing Area Studies, McGill University, and Graduate Research Fellow of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies. He has published widely on conﬂict and security in such journals as Studies in Conﬂict and Terrorism, Small Wars and Insurgencies, and Civil Wars.

CONTEMPORARY SECURITY STUDIES

NATO’S SECRET ARMY Operation Gladio and terrorism in Western Europe Daniel Ganser THE US, NATO AND MILITARY BURDEN-SHARING Peter Kent Forster and Stephen J. Cimbala RUSSIAN GOVERNANCE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Geo-strategy, geopolitics and new governance Irina Isakova THE FOREIGN OFFICE AND FINLAND 1938–1940 Diplomatic sideshow Craig Gerrard RETHINKING THE NATURE OF WAR Edited by Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Jan Angstrom PERCEPTION AND REALITY IN THE MODERN YUGOSLAV CONFLICT Myth, falsehood and deceit 1991–1995 Brendan O’Shea THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PEACEBUILDING IN POSTDAYTON BOSNIA Tim Donais THE DISTRACTED EAGLE The rift between America and Old Europe Peter H. Merkl THE IRAQ WAR European perspectives on politics, strategy, and operations Edited by Jan Hallenberg and Håkan Karlsson

STRATEGIC CONTEST Weapons proliferation and war in the Greater Middle East Richard L. Russell PROPAGANDA, THE PRESS AND CONFLICT The Gulf War and Kosovo David R. Willcox MISSILE DEFENCE International, regional and national implications Edited by Bertel Heurlin and Sten Rynning GLOBALISING JUSTICE FOR MASS ATROCITIES A revolution in accountability Chandra Lekha Sriram ETHNIC CONFLICT AND TERRORISM The origins and dynamics of civil wars Joseph L. Soeters GLOBALISATION AND THE FUTURE OF TERRORISM Patterns and predictions Brynjar Lia NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND STRATEGY The evolution of American nuclear policy Stephen J. Cimbala NASSER AND THE MISSILE AGE IN THE MIDDLE EAST Owen L. Sirrs WAR AS RISK MANAGEMENT Strategy and conﬂict in an age of globalised risks Yee-Kuang Heng MILITARY NANOTECHNOLOGY Potential applications and preventive arms control Jürgen Altmann NATO AND WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION Regional alliance, global threats Eric R. Terzuolo

EUROPEANISATION OF NATIONAL SECURITY IDENTITY The EU and the changing security identities of the Nordic states Pernille Rieker INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT PREVENTION AND PEACEBUILDING Sustaining the peace in post conﬂict societies Edited by T. David Mason and James D. Meernik CONTROLLING THE WEAPONS OF WAR Politics, persuasion, and the prohibition of inhumanity Brian Rappert CHANGING TRANSATLANTIC SECURITY RELATIONS Do the U.S., the EU and Russia form a new strategic triangle? Edited by Jan Hallenberg and Håkan Karlsson THEORETICAL ROOTS OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY Machiavelli and American unilateralism Thomas M. Kane CORPORATE SOLDIERS AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY The rise of private military companies Christopher Kinsey TRANSFORMING EUROPEAN MILITARIES Coalition operations and the technology gap Gordon Adams and Guy Ben-Ari GLOBALISATION, CONFLICT AND THE SECURITY STATE National security in a ‘new’ strategic era Edited by Robert G. Patman THE POLITICAL ROAD TO WAR WITH IRAQ Bush, 9/11 and the drive to overthrow Saddam Nick Ritchie and Paul Rogers BOSNIAN SECURITY AFTER DAYTON New perspectives Edited by Michael A. Innes

BOSNIAN SECURITY AFTER DAYTON New perspectives

Edited by Michael A. Innes

First published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2006 Selection and editorial matter, Michael A. Innes; individual chapters, the contributors This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN10: 0-415-39958-0 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-96901-4 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-39958-6 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-96901-4 (ebk)

CONTENTS

List of contributors Preface

ix xi

Introduction: security in between

1

MICHAEL A. INNES

1 NATO, the Balkan crises, and European security and defense policy

6

THOMAS MOWLE

2 Power-sharing or partition? History’s lessons for keeping the peace in Bosnia

23

ALAN J. KUPERMAN

3 Democratic ends, (un)democratic means? Reﬂections on democratization strategies in Brcˇko and in Bosnia-Herzegovina

51

VALERY PERRY

4 The clandestine political economy of war and peace in Bosnia

71

PETER ANDREAS

5 The North African mujahideen network of the Western Balkans

96

EVAN F. KOHLMANN

6 Environmental security in post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina PETER STOETT

vii

118

CONTENTS

7 Media and security after Dayton

138

ADAM JONES

8 Overcoming the failings of Dayton: defense reform in Bosnia-Herzegovina

155

TOBIAS PIETZ

9 The limits of post-conﬂict police reform

173

TIMOTHY DONAIS

10 Crossing boundaries: State Border Services and the multidimensional nature of security

191

ALICE HILLS

Select bibliography Index

209 212

viii

CONTRIBUTORS

Michael A. Innes is Visiting Research Fellow, School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds, working on counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation, and transnational threats. He spent three and a half years in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and he has published widely on conﬂict and security issues. Major Thomas S. Mowle is Associate Professor of Political Science at the United States Air Force Academy and the author of Allies at Odds? The United States and the European Union (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Alan J. Kuperman is Assistant Professor of Public Affairs at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin. He has published widely on humanitarian intervention and ethnic conﬂict. Valery Perry works on strategic planning, research and evaluation projects at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Mission to Bosnia-Herzegovina. Peter Andreas is Assistant Professor of political science and international studies at Brown University, currently working on a book entitled Globalized Siege: Humanitarians and Black Marketeers in the Battle for Sarajevo (under contract with Cornell University Press). Evan F. Kohlmann is a terrorism consultant and the author of Al-Qaida’s Jihad in Europe: The Afghan-Bosnian Network (Berg, 2004). Peter Stoett is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science, Concordia University, and Research Associate, University of Bihac, Bosnia. Adam Jones is Associate Research Fellow in the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University, and the author of numerous books and articles on transitional media, security, and genocide. Tobias Pietz is a political scientist and researcher at the Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC), working on demobilization, reintegration, and military restructuring in the Balkans. ix

CONTRIBUTORS

Timothy Donais is Assistant Professor of political science at the University of Windsor (Canada), and the author of The Political Economy of Peacebuilding in Post-Dayton Bosnia (Routledge, 2005). Alice Hills is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Leeds, where she directs the program on conﬂict, security, and development. She is the author of Border Security in the Balkans: Europe’s Gatekeepers (Oxford University Press, 2005).

x

PREFACE

Scholarship on the collapse of Yugoslavia is plentiful, as are journalistic and diplomatic memoirs. Criticism of the international community is also widely available, little of which has been very constructive. A few articles dealing with previously sensitive topics have begun appearing recently in academic and professional journals, but at no point have the subjects of such research been pulled together into a single updated text. To borrow from Paul Hockenos, the author of Homeland Calling: Exile patriotism and the Balkan Wars (Cornell University Press, 2003), this was a book that I wanted on my shelf, not necessarily one I wanted to edit myself. My thanks, therefore, go ﬁrst to the scholars and practitioners who agreed to write for this volume or have their work appear among its entries. Their efforts and commitment to the project made it possible, and it is their attention to Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Western Balkans that allows the rest of us to further our understanding of the issues. Their chapters are neither uniform of approach nor of conclusion, as is appropriate in a work that provides an outlet for fresh scholarship and new perspectives. Thanks also to Andrew Humphrys, Marjorie François, and Routledge for agreeing to publish Bosnian Security after Dayton, to the History Department at Concordia University for use of its computer lab, and to family, friends, and colleagues for their interest, patience, and encouragement. Michael A. Innes Sarajevo

xi

INTRODUCTION Security in between Michael A. Innes

At no time since the end of the 1991–1995 Balkan conﬂicts has the conundrum of Bosnian security been more in need of close examination. On the one hand, governance issues have preoccupied scholarship, policy, and practice, as international efforts to build a viable state have faced off against domestic elites – and, increasingly, their constituencies – intent on rebufﬁng difﬁcult or unwanted reforms. On the other hand, some of those same preoccupations appear almost parochial, even irrelevant, in the face of such transnational threats to collective security as international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Existential challenges are nothing new to Bosnia-Herzegovina (referred to interchangeably and without contention throughout this volume as Bosnia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and in its abbreviated form, BiH). But its post-war transition, its survival as a state, and its own role in international security were no better deﬁned in 2005 than they were following the signing of its peace settlement a decade earlier. Since then, the evolution of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s own wartime legacies and the emergence of new threats elsewhere in the world have conspired against static interpretations of Bosnian security. Here, some basic distinctions need to be made between security in Bosnia and security of Bosnia. Security in Bosnia is understood in this volume to mean a safe and secure environment in which a return to open military conﬂict is less and less likely, and former warring factions, consequently, no longer represent a serious threat to human survival. Security of Bosnia is understood as a more broadly deﬁned spectrum of conditions that turns on conventional views of national security. That means the residents of the state are relatively free from external threat, and the state itself is a net contributor to international security rather than a net consumer of it. The key question, of course, is which perspective is most appropriate? Understanding this might best be accomplished by looking to the two overarching security frameworks at play over the last decade: the General Framework Agreement for Peace, or GFAP, and the Global War on Terror, or GWOT. Somewhere in between lays security in Bosnia and security of Bosnia – in other words, Bosnian security. 1

MICHAEL A. INNES

The General Framework Agreement for Peace, negotiated and signed in late 1995, was the ﬁrst post-war set of benchmarks by which Bosnia-Herzegovina’s contending factions were to govern themselves and be governed. Referred to variously as Dayton, the Dayton Accords, the Dayton Peace Accords, the DPA, the Paris-Dayton Accords, or GFAP, it was meant as an interim peace settlement, and brought an end to the ﬁghting between the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and their ethnic sub-state afﬁliates. The GFAP has kept the destructive genie of open military conﬂict in its bottle since it was signed, but it is not without its limitations. It did little, for example, to reconcile long-term ethnic, religious, and territorial issues. It provided limited room for reform and progress. More has been demanded of its provisions than the original drafters could have accounted for, and its wording was sufﬁciently ambiguous as to remain open to the self-serving interpretations of the same extremists responsible for instigating conﬂict in the ﬁrst place. Six years after the GFAP came into effect, the global security agenda took a distinctly realist turn in its focus on international terrorism and militant Islam. The 11 September 2001 attacks on Manhattan and the Pentagon, subsequent atrocities in Moscow, Madrid, Bali, Beslan, Casablanca, Istanbul, Sharm ElSheik, and London, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, diverted attention and resources away from troubled states such as Bosnia, placing much greater responsibility for domestic security in domestic hands. On 2 December 2004, after ten years and two separate post-war peace missions – the Implementation Force (IFOR) and the Stabilization Force (SFOR) – NATO transferred authority for Annex 1-A of the GFAP, the military aspects of the Dayton Accords, to the European Union. There are now three guiding foreign security interests in Bosnia-Herzegovina: NATO HQ Sarajevo, NATO’s new, much reduced mission; EUFOR, the EU’s military mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina and SFOR’s inheritor; and the Ofﬁce of the High Representative (known also as the European Union Special Representative, or EUSR), the executive body responsible for coordinating the civilian aspects of the GFAP. Bosnia’s political fate lies in the balance. Meanwhile, more immediate security problems reinforce the need for international organizations to remain committed to the region and more effectively coordinate their Bosnia mandates, for Western Balkan states to begin effectively policing themselves and collaborating on regional security, and for domestic governance to divest itself of persistent nationalist disputes and to implement the kinds of reforms needed to facilitate both security in Bosnia and security of Bosnia. To wit, the International Crisis Group has distinguished between the general instability of 1995 and the regional vulnerability of 2005. The most predominant issues remain “the apprehension of war criminals, extremist religious groups, and border security.” The risk that Bosnia has become “a weapons supermarket for terrorist and guerrilla movements” further suggests a more compelling and outward-looking set of obligations.1 Full responsibility for Bosnian security will eventually devolve, appropriately, to Bosnian authorities. But what do they stand to inherit? Some suggest it 2

INTRODUCTION

will be a hastily imposed, artiﬁcially induced, and thoroughly misunderstood security environment. There is thus considerable need for fresh discussion of its composite elements, with a view towards understanding whether or not the state can sustain itself, and ultimately become more than the sum of its parts. Understanding Bosnia’s prospects at this critical juncture is contingent on greater understanding of the interaction between, on the one hand, the GFAP – and its corresponding security structures and processes – and, on the other hand, the various unilateral and multilateral campaigns against terrorist actors – and their corresponding security structures and processes. Are they competing or complementary? Has the contemporary prominence of the latter signiﬁcantly altered the goals of the former? Or, to put it another way, are these frameworks fundamentally incompatible domains of security practice, as many cynics have argued? Or are armed humanitarianism and counterterrorism inextricably linked, in all their local, regional, and international manifestations? Policymakers have attempted to link the two in their public speeches, but the truth of the situation remains elusive and ill-deﬁned. The various analyses and case studies contained in this volume provide partial answers, addressing discrete pieces of what was once referred to as Bosnia’s “security jigsaw”.2 Many of the contributors acknowledge 11 September 2001, Iraq, and the specter of global terrorism as empirical referents. Their analyses, however, suggest that the turn in Bosnian security that followed the change in perspective was subtle more often than it was crude. Taken as a whole, it is difﬁcult to imagine that conﬂict and accommodation within the post-war Bosnian space have not helped forge some measure of common, and perhaps even sustainable, ground for future generations. The key question remains: can resolution of problems that revolve around security in Bosnia lead to greater security of Bosnia? Two related policy debates, drawing the connection between state failure and terrorist sanctuaries, suggest much more pointedly the critical link between domestic and foreign security. Pundits and policymakers alike have looked to failed states as real or potential “safe havens”, where international terrorists can plan, train, and launch mass casualty terrorist attacks, unmolested by hostile forces, against civilian targets abroad.3 Bosnia-Herzegovina has been identiﬁed as one such environment, for quite speciﬁc reasons: its administrative weaknesses and systemic vulnerability to criminal and terrorist exploitation; and its direct links to veterans of the anti-Soviet jihad in 1980s Afghanistan, who migrated to Bosnia during the 1992–1995 war. Many settled permanently in Bosnia thereafter. Following 9/11, sensitivity to their presence was substantially heightened. Even more contentious were the professional jihadists among them, particularly those who appear to have graduated to the ranks of Al Qaeda and its afﬁliates. State failure, of course, is a debatable term of reference, of limited value in relation to a transitional state such as Bosnia-Herzegovina. Whether it constitutes a failed state is contingent on the duration of its transition, and whether or not it will emerge to become a full functioning member of the international community. 3

MICHAEL A. INNES

More importantly, the “safe haven” debate in policy discourse does little to address indigenous organized crime rackets, corrupt nationalists, and support networks for fugitive war criminals responsible for perpetuating the illicit trade in “guns, money and documents” that makes Bosnia a “one-stop shop” for international terrorists.4 Understanding the spaces in between, where all such subversive actors operate and thrive, is central to understanding contemporary Bosnian security.5 The purpose of this book is not speciﬁcally to engage the debate on terrorist sanctuaries. Nor does it pretend to be comprehensive in its coverage of topics or systematic in its approach to the many challenges discussed herein. It is hoped, however, that the implications of many of the chapters will nonetheless shed some light on the domestic puzzle of problems and concerns faced by the Bosnian state. Chapters by Thomas Mowle, Alan Kuperman, and Valery Perry revolve around issues of intervention and governance. Peter Andreas, Evan Kohlmann, and Peter Stoett discuss some of Bosnia’s most under-explored security issues, their roots in pre-war and wartime conditions, and their legacies for today. Chapters by Adam Jones, Tobias Pietz, Timothy Donais, and Alice Hills map the purpose and progress of defense, police, media, and border security reform. They offer glimpses into the management of Bosnia’s social, cultural, political, and physical dimensions – from the problems and potential attendant on its environmental characteristics and ecological health, to the state’s capacity to police its own borders and the internal and external security spaces they deﬁne. The function of scholarly research should be to promote knowledge and inspire discussion, and no monograph can realistically be considered “the ﬁnal word” – at least not for very long. The passage of time and historical hindsight will eventually allow for greater political latitude in studies of the postYugoslav, post-war, post-9/11 Western Balkans. Recent academic inquiry has focused increasingly on the many micro-histories of the 1992–1995 period, and previously inaccessible policy and intelligence documents have already become available for scholarly scrutiny. As Bosnia’s more active role in international affairs encourages new perspectives, the need for continued academic discovery and close study of the issues will remain. Overall, this project surveys just a few of the many relevant subjects. Each chapter in its own way addresses the interstices of Bosnian security, exploring the various grey zones that bind the state together – the spaces in between foreign and domestic, between one ethnic group and another, between old problems and new, between the obvious and the underneath of things.

Notes 1 Eufor-Ia: Changing Bosnia’s Security Arrangements, Europe Brieﬁng, Sarajevo/ Brussels: International Crisis Group, 29 June 2004, 1, 8. 2 Speech by the High Representative to the North Atlantic Council, 16 January 2002. OHR Press Ofﬁce. 4

INTRODUCTION

3 See, for example, Francis T. Miko, “Removing Terrorist Sanctuaries: The 9/11 Commission Recommendations and U.S. Policy,” Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 10 August 2004; and Robert Rotberg (ed.), State Failure and State Weakness In a Time of Terror, Washington, DC: Brookings Institute Press, 2003. 4 Harry de Quetteville, “U.S. hunts Islamic militants in Bosnia,” Daily Telegraph, 26 July 2004. 5 See especially Alice Hills, Border Security in the Balkans: Europe’s Gatekeepers, Adelphi Paper 371, Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

5

1 NATO, THE BALKAN CRISES, AND EUROPEAN SECURITY AND DEFENSE POLICY 1 Thomas Mowle

The legacy of the 1990s’ Balkan crises is not yet fully formed, but it may well be as revolutionary as the legacy of the crises that began the twentieth century. Gavrilo Princip’s bullet in the name of Serb nationalism led to the fragmentation of European empires, the creation of new international diplomatic structures, and the staged insertion of the United States into European security. While the direct effect of modern Serb nationalism was less bloody than World War I, its legacy seems to be nearly as dramatic. The Balkan wars, Bosnia in particular, have highlighted weaknesses in international diplomacy, in the United Nations itself, and in its relationship with other security and political organizations. The crises coincided with a new wave of nationalist fragmentation in Europe. Not all legacies are parallel, of course. The United States has reached a pinnacle of relative power, and is also beginning a staged withdrawal from Europe. Both trends have catalyzed European unity, leading to expansion of both NATO and the European Union and a new focus in the EU on developing its own voice in foreign and security policy. This chapter looks at the EU–NATO relationship; other parts of this book address other legacies. Sarajevo in 1992 was no more the cause of these changes than it was in 1914 – it was rather a focal point. While this chapter maintains a Balkan emphasis, one must remain aware of the larger European and global context. 1991, the year of Croatian and Slovenian secession, also saw the conclusion of the ﬁrst coalition war against Iraq, the breakup of the Soviet Union, NATO’s Rome Summit on the future of NATO, and the completion of the Treaty on European Union that would be signed in Maastricht a few weeks into the next year. From 1947 to 1991, European security had been a subset of the Soviet–American rivalry, and non-NATO security efforts languished. With the Soviet threat gone, NATO 6

NATO AND ESDP

could either break camp or reposition itself as a Western security organization rather than a security organization for the West. The interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo did not match NATO’s original mission of collective self-defense, but the wars were near NATO members’ borders. By 2004, NATO was securing Kabul, Afghanistan, and training Iraqi security forces; far from the North Atlantic, the alliance was redeﬁning its area of concern to Nearly Anywhere Terrorists Operate. American dominance in Iraq and its behavior in Bosnia forced European leaders to recognize both their relative weakness and the ease with which the United States could undermine their diplomacy. They could either accept subordinate status or they could redeﬁne European security structures. Slowly, they chose the latter, following the Bosnian war, with the British and French declaration at St. Malo in December 1998 that they would try to develop a European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) within the EU. Kosovo, as well as ongoing disagreements with the Clinton Administration over the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto Protocol, and many other multilateral processes reinforced this decision. Europe moved to develop a Rapid Reaction Force and more closely coordinate its Common Foreign and Security Policy. This trend continued under George W. Bush, whose focus on Afghanistan and Iraq created the opportunity for Europe to use its forces to secure Bosnia and Macedonia with less and less American assistance. This chapter provides the overview of how the Bosnian jigsaw has rearranged the relationship among the UN, NATO, EU, and the United States. Other chapters zoom in on speciﬁc aspects of the Bosnian war and peace – human rights, terrorism, trans-Atlantic cooperation, democratization, and many others – all of which also reﬂect the larger context of post-Cold War and post-9/11 international politics. It begins with a discussion of the relationship between NATO, the Western European Union, and the European Community during the Cold War and immediately after. It follows this with a discussion of the Bosnian war from the perspective of the diplomatic and military interactions among these organizations, their members, and the United Nations. Finally, it describes the legacy of the Balkan wars on NATO and the EU, a legacy that of course is not yet complete.

European security structures through 1991 As long as American and European security interests coincided within NATO, purely European security institutions seemed superﬂuous. The European Defense Community, an adjunct to the European Coal and Steel Community, would have combined all military forces larger than a brigade, but France ultimately voted against its own proposal.2 The European Economic Community did not formally incorporate foreign and security policy.3 The Western European Union (WEU) predated NATO by a year, but once the trans-Atlantic organization was founded, the primary role left the WEU was to “monitor German 7

THOMAS MOWLE

rearmament.”4 France, after it drifted away from NATO in 1959–1966, became the WEU’s prime advocate.5 The WEU languished until the Single European Act (SEA) of February 1986. The SEA provided a formal basis for European Political Cooperation, which evolved into the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). The WEU’s Hague Platform of 27 October 1987 called for an additional European defense identity, represented by a more active WEU working with NATO.6 This had already begun, as the WEU carried out a minesweeping mission in the Persian Gulf in 1987–1988, during the Iran–Iraq war. This operation was out of the NATO area; perhaps the United Kingdom and France would have acted on their own, but it seems unlikely that Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands would have joined the mission without the WEU authorization.7 During the 1990–1991 Gulf War, the WEU provided three-quarters of the naval forces used to monitor the arms embargo against Iraq.8 This activity masked the lingering incongruity in the WEU’s role: what was its relationship to NATO and the European Union – and, by extension, what was the relationship between NATO and the European Union? In September 1990, Italy proposed having the European Community (EC) absorb the WEU as its defense arm. France and Germany endorsed the idea, but the United Kingdom and the Netherlands led European opposition. The United States shared this opposition, unless the WEU would act merely as a European “pillar” within NATO. By the next year, the Italians had joined the United Kingdom in suggesting that the WEU would be “a bridge between NATO and the European Community.”9 Where the French and Germans proposed “an EC army operating outside the existing NATO alliance,” the British and Italians proposed that the WEU act as “the means to strengthen the European pillar of the alliance.”10 NATO had its own questions about its purpose and identity. NATO was founded to defend its members; now its key opponent had imploded. From the ﬁrst weeks after the Berlin Wall fell, the United States pressed to maintain NATO, eventually arguing that NATO was needed to keep Europe at peace, to defend against any lingering military threat, and to manage the relationship with Russia.11 The United Kingdom strongly supported this vision of a strong NATO with a strong U.S. role. In May 1991, a Rapid Reaction Corps was set up under UK command to address non-Article 5 (non-defense) contingencies; France opposed using such a force in the former Yugoslavia.12 By the end of 1991, these questions had been papered over: the WEU, meeting in parallel to the Maastricht Summit, suggested that it be both “the defence component of the European Union and . . . a means to strengthen the European pillar of the Atlantic Alliance.” NATO’s November 1991 Rome Summit endorsed the idea of “interlocking institutions,”13 and its call for a “European security identity and defense role,” which became known as ESDI within NATO, met both U.S. and French preferences.14 The WEU more closely reﬁned its role in June 1992 at its summit near Bonn. These “Petersberg tasks” included “humanitarian and rescue tasks; peacekeeping 8

NATO AND ESDP

tasks; [and] tasks of combat forces in crisis management, including peacemaking.” The WEU also instituted a military planning cell, but not a situation center or other operational command facilities. The French and Germans had expanded their Cold War brigade-level cooperation into a Eurocorps in October 1991. This would grow to include forces from Belgium, Spain, and Luxembourg, and was integrated into the NATO command structure in January 1993, just after France agreed to let NATO play an ofﬁcial role in Bosnia. In January 1994, at Brussels, ESDI was given shape in the form of Combined Joint Task Forces (CJTFs), which would be “coalitions of the willing” operating under European command.15

The Bosnian crisis Europe led the initial security response in the Balkans, as the EC sent a few dozen observers to monitor the cease-ﬁre it negotiated to end the Slovenian conﬂict.16 The Community could not agree, however, on further action. While France, with German and Dutch support, proposed either sending the WEU to Croatia or authorizing a UN intervention, the British led opposition to both – and both the United States and Soviet Union opposed UN action at this time.17 When widespread ﬁghting broke out in Croatia in September and the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) attacked Dubrovnik and Vukovar in October, the EC responded with arms and trade sanctions that were matched by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). In March 1992, 14,000 UN peacekeepers began monitoring a UN-brokered cease-ﬁre.18 The EC also took early steps to try to prevent the war in Bosnia. Between 23 February and 18 March 1992, EC mediator José Cutileiro developed a plan that would have created three autonomous regions within a unitary republic. This plan was accepted in principle by the leaders of Croatia, Bosnia, and Serbia, but rejected in its details (as would many later plans) by both the Bosnian (Muslim) government and the leaders of the Bosnian Serbs.19 The EC also extended the previous year’s UN arms embargo to cover all trade with Serbia and Montenegro; the United Nations endorsed this policy on 31 May. This was followed by UNSCR 776 on 2 September, which allowed the use of NATO airpower to protect aid shipments – protected on the ground by the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) – and UNSCR 781 in October, which imposed a noﬂy zone over Bosnia. Both the European Community and United States supported these steps. The WEU monitored the arms embargo in the Adriatic Sea and the Danube River in 1992–1993 (after which the operation was merged into NATO), and also conducted a policing operation in Mostar from 1994–1996 and mine-clearing in Croatia.20 The outcome of this peace process, and the validity of continuing the arms embargo against Bosnia, would be two of the main factors separating the European Union and the United States. The main goal of George H. W. Bush’s administration seemed to be to get involved only to the minimum extent needed 9

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to avoid having the war spread. They feared a Vietnam-like quagmire and believed that the war was a manifestation of ethnic hatreds.21 During the ﬁrst two years of the Clinton Administration, U.S. policy toward Bosnia had two major elements, each irritating to the Europeans. The ﬁrst was its negative approach to every peace proposal; the other was its advocacy of lifting sanctions and striking Serb positions. The U.S. opposed European peace proposals on the general grounds that they rewarded Serb aggression and threatened the unity of the Bosnian state. Following this lead, the Bosnian government often rejected the plans, and the Bosnian Serbs were even more reliable on that score. This pattern had begun with the Cutileiro Plan, and continued with the Vance-Owen Peace Plan of 1992–1993, the Owen-Stoltenberg Peace Plan of 1993, and the Kinkel and Juppé European Action Plan of 1993.22 When peace was ﬁnally achieved at Dayton in November 1995, Alain Juppé, French Prime Minister said, “Of course, it resembles like a twin the European plan we presented eighteen months ago.” His Foreign Minister, Hervé de Charette, said, “One cannot call it an American peace . . . The fact is that the Americans looked at this affair in ex-Yugoslavia from a great distance for nearly four years and basically blocked the progression of things.”23 European leaders were even more displeased with American advocacy of “lift and strike.” This policy was driven by the perceived inequity of the arms embargo, which was locking in place a severe material disadvantage against Bosnia, a recognized member of the United Nations. While Bosnian troop strength outnumbered Serb forces once the JNA retired from the ﬁeld (an imbalance which would increase after the Croat-Muslim Federation was negotiated in Washington in March 1994), the Bosnian Serbs had 400 tanks and 500 artillery pieces at their disposal while the government had very few.24 The United States recommended lifting this embargo and using air power to strike Serb forces until the government had built up its strength. In May 1993, Secretary of State Warren Christopher toured European capitals to sell this plan, but was rebuffed. President Clinton then promoted a policy of protecting six safe havens in Bosnia, but the threat of unilateral lift and strike would continue to be raised by Congress.25 Europeans put forward two objections to this proposal, one moral and one practical. British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd described the policy as “leveling the killing ﬁeld.”26 More arms would only undermine chances for a negotiated peace by giving the government forces an incentive to continue ﬁghting – and encourage the Serbs to ﬁght harder before their advantage slipped away. The practical objection was that European forces were on the ground as part of UNPROFOR. These troops were vulnerable to Serb retaliation if Serb forces were attacked. This was not merely a theoretical risk. NATO took no action until February 1994, although it had been authorized to enforce the no-ﬂy zones and protect aid shipments in a dual-key arrangement with the UN commander. The 5 February 1994 marketplace massacre led to a NATO ultimatum to the Serbs to pull back their heavy weapons twenty kilometers from Sarajevo. The Serbs complied, with 10

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Russian forces covering them. At the end of that month, NATO shot down four Serb aircraft violating the no-ﬂy zone around Banja Luka. In mid-April, NATO launched airstrikes against Serb forces attacking the safe haven of Gorazde, and the Serbs seized 200 peacekeepers hostage to deter further attacks. NATO ordered a similar twenty-kilometer pullback for all the safe areas, but the United Nations declined to authorize further airstrikes to enforce that rule.27 Another round of hostage-taking followed NATO attacks on an airﬁeld in Serbcontrolled Croatia that had been used to attack the safe haven of Bihac in November 1994.28 By that time, the United States had withdrawn its forces from the embargo-monitoring mission in the Adriatic.29 With frustration growing – a U.S. sponsored “contact group” made up of the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Russia had proposed a peace plan that had hit the same roadblock as all the others, namely that the Bosnian Serbs refused to give up land they had captured – the Europeans began discussing pulling their forces out. The United States agreed on 7 December that it would send 25,000 troops as part of a NATO mission either to monitor the peace or to withdraw forces under ﬁre.30 The Bosnian situation remained relatively stable until 1 May 1995, when Croatia’s successful three-day campaign to liberate Western Slavonia demonstrated the vulnerability of Serb positions.31 The Serbs in Bosnia retaliated with sustained attacks on all the safe areas. The UNPROFOR commander called for airstrikes as early as 7 May, but was overruled at higher levels until 25 May, when Spanish and American aircraft attacked positions near Pale, the Bosnian Serb capital. NATO attacked additional targets when the Serbs continued their shelling, which led to about 350 peacekeepers being taken hostage and chained to ammunition bunkers to deter further attacks. The French counter-attacked at the Vrbranja Bridge in Sarajevo, freeing their hostages, and fought to maintain control of weapons collection points. British forces took an active role in holding off Serbs around Gorazde while the Bosnian army moved into position itself.32 Concluding that stronger action was needed, the British and French led the formation of a 10,000-man NATO (European) Rapid Reaction Force to support UNPROFOR, but its deployment was slow.33 This stronger European position created a dilemma for the United States. Chirac was publicly calling for stronger action or withdrawal of the force. If the United States did not support action, it would undermine NATO unity – and undermine its own two years of advocacy for stronger action – but if it did not support action, it was committed through NATO to aid the withdrawal. Most at risk were the six safe havens, which had been advocated most strongly by the United States but implemented with reluctance by the Dutch, French, and British. Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkin said the “safe havens policy was fundamentally ﬂawed because the UN Security Council resolutions were not backed up with the military capability required to make them credible.”34 This would become clear in July. On 9 July, Serb forces advancing on the safe area of Srebrenica took twenty 11

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Dutch peacekeepers hostage. Lt. Gen. Bernard Janvier, leader of the UNPF, declined to authorize the use of close air support to defend either the peacekeepers or the town until 11 July – by which time the Serbs had entered the town and pushed aside the Dutch. The International Committee of the Red Cross estimates the scope of the ensuing massacre at over 7,000.35 On 14 July, as Serb forces turned to the nearby safe area of Zepa, Janvier ordered the peacekeepers out and advised the Bosnians to defend Gorazde on their own. French President Jacques Chirac proposed a ground offensive to liberate the safe areas, but was overruled by the Dutch and British – whom Chirac then compared to Neville Chamberlain at Munich, while threatening to support the U.S. lift-and-strike option.36 On 21 July, the allies met in London and agreed to use air power in case of an imminent attack on Gorazde. The NAC (North Atlantic Council) endorsed this on 25 July, the day Zepa fell, and also agreed to turn the strike decision authority over to the military commander, Admiral Leighton Smith. The UNSG (United Nations Secretary General) agreed at the same time to give Janvier the ﬁnal say on the UN “key.” Meanwhile, the French, British, and Dutch decided to occupy Mt. Igman so they could command the Sarajevo area with artillery.37 With Bihac also now under attack, the NAC extended the threat of air power to all safe areas on 1 August.38 On the same day, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution to lift sanctions on Bosnia by a veto-proof margin, as the Senate had done a week before.39 August saw retrenchment of forces in Bosnia before the ﬁnal action. Europeans and Serbs exchanged gunﬁre around Sarajevo throughout the month. The British extracted their forces from Gorazde, eliminating the last isolated allied force. The United States proposed another peace plan, this time accepting the idea of partition, and repeating its intent to participate in keeping the peace afterwards. Like earlier plans, the Lake plan required the Bosnian Serbs to give back land they had captured. This point quickly became moot, however. On 4 August, Croatia launched Operation Storm, which recaptured the Krajina, relieved Bihac, and created 150,000 Serb refugees. The offensive in northwest Bosnia would continue to the end of the war, with Serb forces pushed out of the land they had not wanted to concede at the conference.40 The “trigger” for automatic NATO retaliation was pulled on 28 August, when a second marketplace mortar in Sarajevo killed thirty-eight Bosnians. From the early morning of 30 August until early morning 1 September, American, British, French and Dutch aircraft and artillery attacked ammunition depots, gun and tank positions around Sarajevo. After a four-day bombing pause, in which Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic demanded an end to the Croat/Bosnian offensive in the west as a condition for him pulling back from Sarajevo, NATO extended its attacks to bridges and communication links as far as the Drina River. Spain and Germany now had joined the effort in the air.41 On 10 September, the United States – acting without explicit NATO authorization – used cruise missiles to attack Serb radars and communications around Banja Luka. While France, Spain, Canada, and Greece all protested this “unauthorized 12

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escalation,” on 14 September Mladic, under pressure from Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic (who would represent all Serb interests at the Dayton peace talks) and from the continuing Western offensive, agreed to end the siege.42 The U.S. diplomatic leader during this end stage, Richard Holbrooke, wrote, “The Western mistake over the previous four years had been to treat the Serbs as rational people with whom one could argue, negotiate, compromise, and agree. In fact, they respected only force or an unambiguous and credible threat to use it.”43 In many ways, the methods used to achieve peace in Bosnia – sustained strategic and tactical airstrikes combined with a ground offensive by local forces – were a validation of the position that the United States had been advocating since Clinton took ofﬁce. It should be noted, however, that after Srebrenica, the European states engaged in the region had come to endorse such action as well. The public impression left, however, was that after three years of European ineffectiveness, culminating in effective Dutch surrender in July, it took only two months of the American plan to end the war. While the airstrikes were multinational, about two-thirds of the sorties were American. The division of labor continued under the Dayton peace agreement: the European Union would offer funds for reconstruction, and NATO would send 50,000 troops to keep the peace. The United States, United Kingdom, and France would each command a zone in Bosnia, all under NATO command, for one year as the Implementation Force (IFOR), and then indeﬁnitely renewed as the Stabilization Force (SFOR).44 This irritated the Europeans, as they felt they had little input into Dayton’s terms, and were now left with the expensive but invisible task of rebuilding.45

Transformation of NATO and EU security structures Bosnia demonstrated European dependence on U.S. forces – if the United States were unwilling to act, or to stay, they needed to have a way to act on their own.46 Clearly, the only options would be to develop an EU force or reform NATO so the European members could act without the United States. The United States preferred to resolve the issue within NATO framework, however, and bitter though it might be to accept, Bosnia had shown that Europe lacked the “will . . . credibility . . . or efﬁcacy” to act even in adjacent areas.47 Over the next few years, France increased its participation with NATO committees, holding out the possibility of fully re-integrating at some point. Foreign Minister Hervé de Charette proposed on 5 December 1995 that NATO be “renovated,” returning to the earlier idea that the WEU could act as the European pillar within NATO, helping to resolve the command and access difﬁculties inherent in the CJTF. NATO adopted this proposal at Berlin in June 1996: NATO ofﬁcials would be “double-hatted” as WEU ofﬁcers for CJTF missions, including having a European Deputy SACEUR (Supreme Allied Commander Europe) serve as commander for European missions. Consensus of the NAC 13

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would be required before a CJTF would begin, retaining a U.S. role, but afterwards NATO would only have oversight, not control, of the mission. The United States was not entirely happy with the Berlin plan, but had succeeded in maintaining the ESDI within NATO, and requiring U.S. approval for any European use of NATO assets.48 Unresolved questions would unravel this ﬁrst Berlin agreement: under what conditions would the WEU be able to use NATO planning resources? What was the role of non-EU members of NATO, especially Turkey? To what extent was NATO assuming a commitment to protect non-members who were now in the WEU?49 After the Madrid Summit of June 1997 ended without resolution of these questions, the Europeans turned yet again to the question of an EU defense force. In March 1998, British Prime Minister Tony Blair told the French National Assembly, “In defence we can and should do more together . . . We have without doubt the best equipped, most deployable, most effective military forces in Europe.” Citing their cooperation on the ground in Bosnia, he said, “I would like this process of practical cooperation to advance much further and faster.”50 On 25 October, in private meetings at Pörtschach, Austria, Blair moved further in expressing ideas that would lead in six weeks to the Joint Declaration on European Defense at St. Malo: given that the EU’s performance in the Balkans was “unacceptable,” deﬁned as it was by “weakness and confusion,” perhaps an EU defense policy could be compatible with NATO after all.51 These European discussions occurred along with a ﬂare-up of violence in Kosovo in March 1998. On 31 March, UNSC Resolution 1160 imposed a new arms embargo on Serbia, demanded that Milosevic withdraw special police, provide Red Cross access, and engage in dialog with Albanians aimed at the Contact Group (Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy) goal of restoring Kosovo’s “enhanced status within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.”52 Both the European Union and NATO became involved as the internal conﬂict simmered. The European Union had issued a common position on 19 March to support Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) peace efforts in Kosovo, froze Serb assets and prohibited new investments and arms sales; in June, it added a ban on ﬂights to Serbia.53 NATO also began to develop military plans over the summer of 1998, with the United States and United Kingdom arguing, unsuccessfully for the moment, that NATO did not need further UN authorization before issuing threats. Later in the year, a NATO Extraction Force went to Macedonia to provide intelligence for OSCE monitors and to evacuate them if needed. Two thousand French, British, German, and Italian troops participated in this mission, but no Americans did beyond those already monitoring the Macedonian situation. General Wesley Clark, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, wrote that here and in an earlier investigation of staging areas in northern Albania, “It was Pentagon policy to have the Europeans take on an ever larger role.”54 At St Malo, the British and French shared Clark’s sentiments, agreeing that “The European Union needs to be in a position to play its full role on the inter14

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national stage” as envisioned in the Treaty of Amsterdam. “To this end, the Union must have the capacity for autonomous action, backed up by credible military forces, the means to decide to use them and a readiness to do so, in order to respond to international crises.” Both NATO and WEU commitments would be maintained, as appropriate, but EU decisions would be made “within the institutional framework of the European Union.” Finally, “the Union must be given appropriate structures and a capacity for analysis of situations, sources of intelligence and a capability for relevant strategic planning, without unnecessary duplication, taking account of the existing assets of the WEU and the evolution of its relations with the European Union.” Both the use of NATO assets and the development of “national or multinational European means outside the NATO framework” were left open and ambiguous in the declaration.55 The initial American reaction to St Malo ranged from shock to suspicion. Secretary of State Madeline Albright’s ofﬁcial response became known as the “3 Ds:” “no discrimination against non-EU European NATO members, no duplication of effort or capabilities, and no decoupling of European security from North American allies.”56 NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson recast these more positively as the “3 Is:” “improvements in European defence capabilities; inclusiveness of the non-EU NATO allies in common efforts; indivisibility of the transatlantic link.”57 Robertson also objected that U.S. policy seemed “schizophrenic,” in that the United States was asking the Europeans to carry more of their own burden for defense but then reacting with suspicion when they made an attempt to do so.58 Both elements of U.S. policy had some basis. “Burden sharing” is difﬁcult to measure, given the difﬁculty in putting a price on strategic location and specialized skills like minesweeping. Nevertheless, the Europeans seemed to combine stinginess with inefﬁciency: working from a similar economic base, the European members of NATO spent about 60 percent as much on defense as the United States, but only obtained one-third of the equipment and conducted one-sixth of the research. Perhaps as a result, during the Kosovo operation, the United States ﬂew over half of all the combat sorties and nearly two-thirds of all sorties. The U.S. Department of Defense stated ofﬁcially, “such disparities in capabilities will seriously affect our ability to operate as an effective alliance over the long term.”59 While the Kosovo operation must be considered a transatlantic success – it met both its operational goals of securing the safety of Kosovars in the long run and its strategic goal of maintaining NATO as a credible force – it also reinforced the tensions from Bosnia that had contributed to St. Malo. Some NATO members, particularly the French, saw too many decisions being made by Clark or even in Washington.60 As in prior conﬂicts in Bosnia and Iraq, the United States provided the majority of the airstrikes, and also was responsible for collecting and analyzing intelligence data. The European Union, or the European portion of NATO, was reminded again that they relied on the United States for military power.61 The EU’s role in Kosovo became reconstruction. As early as 26 May, the Commission had proposed a Stabilization and Association Process, which was 15

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adopted at Cologne on 10 June. European states would also play a stronger role in Kosovo Force (KFOR) than in Allied Force, providing 65 percent of the forces by the year 2000, a percentage similar to their contribution to SFOR.62 The Eurocorps took command of KFOR within NATO in April 2000. Europeans also manned the Kosovo sectors considered the most dangerous, leaving the United States in the southeastern region – although its proximity to Macedonia simply provided a different set of challenges for Americans than did reverse ethnic cleansing in the northern city of Mitrovica or tension in the Albanianmajority Presevo Valley in Serbia proper.63 Against this context, what would become the EU’s Rapid Reaction Force (RRF) took shape. At NATO’s Washington Summit on 24 April 1999, the allies agreed that European forces would be “separable but not separate,” which didn’t completely clarify matters.64 In its Cologne Summit on 4 June 1999, the European Union said its force would be one it would use “without prejudice to actions by NATO.” Moving on to Helsinki in December of that year, the European Union agreed that it would create, by 2003, the ability to deploy a force of 60,000 servicemen within sixty days to conduct Petersberg tasks for up to one year. This “Headline Goal” was supplemented by an agreement to set up a Political and Security Committee for CFSP, a Military Committee of Defense Chiefs or militaries, and a Military Staff to support the Council. The Helsinki plan continued the agreement reached in Washington that the EU force – the RRF – would be guaranteed access to NATO assets, but was less clear about how much prior consultation would be conducted with NATO.65 Furthermore, the RRF troops would not be separate from forces already assigned to NATO. No separate headquarters was established, leaving it dependant on sharing NATO facilities, including the Deputy SACEUR. France did not want to build its force using NATO force-planning numbers (and the four non-NATO member states could not do so), while the United Kingdom and Germany did not want to conduct a separate planning drill for both organizations. Even the assertive Headline Goal left out details such as how the RRF would deploy, the opposition it could expect to face, provisions for an immediate smaller response, and basing facilities. The most critical question, however, was the NATO–EU relationship, in particular the role of non-EU members of NATO – in other words, Turkey.66 Turkey and other non-EU states had long had an associate membership in the WEU, able to participate in its decision-making. With the WEU rolled into the European Union, the six European members of NATO were left out. Turkey was adjacent to several zones of conﬂict in which the RRF could potentially be used: the Aegean, the Balkans, Cyprus, the Caucasus, Iraq, and Israel. In addition, Turkey had contributed more than the other non-EU European members to the NATO assets that would now be available to the European Union. Thus Turkey threatened to use its veto in NATO to block EU access unless it was in turn given the right to participate in planning for operations in areas of special interest. France and Greece led a group of EU members who opposed such access.67 16

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The Turkish position, as well as a lack of funding support, stalled the RRF for most of 2002. In September, in Warsaw, U.S. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld proposed a NATO Rapid Reaction Force to the alliance’s other defense ministers, warning that “If NATO does not have a force that is quick and agile, which can deploy in days or weeks instead of months or years, then it will not have much to offer the world in the twenty-ﬁrst century.”68 NATO endorsed this concept in Prague on 21 November 2002, saying the “NATO Response Force (NRF) . . . will have its initial operational capability as soon as possible, but not later than October 2004 and its full operational capability not later than October 2006.” With respect to “the related work of the EU Headline Goal,” NATO agreed the efforts “should be mutually reinforcing while respecting the autonomy of both organisations.”69 While the NRF risked making the European RRF redundant, the European Council found a way to compromise on the deadlock between Turkey and Greece at Copenhagen in December 2002. Access to NATO facilities for ESDP purposes would “apply only to those EU Member States which are also either NATO members or parties to the ‘Partnership for Peace,’ and which have consequently concluded bilateral security agreements with NATO.” This excluded Cyprus (and Malta), meeting Turkish concerns, in a way that could be seen as rational in Greece.70 This made it possible for the European Union to proceed with taking over the NATO peace mission in Macedonia and also with replacing NATO as the lead for the police mission in Bosnia on 1 January 2003.71 ESDP forces, led by Germany, took over Operation Amber Fox in Macedonia on 31 March 2003, with all EU members except Denmark and Finland participating. Thirteen non-EU European states and Canada joined the operation.72 Under “Berlin Plus,” as agreed in March 2003, NATO has stated that when it is not involved, the EU will have assured access to common NATO resources, in particular the planning staff at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE). The Deputy SACEUR (DSACEUR) would have overall command of an ESDP mission, using a cell of the EU Military Staff co-located with SHAPE in Mons, Belgium. If SHAPE or NATO resources are not available, the next option would be for an EU operation conducted using a national planning center; the ﬁnal option would be to activate an EU headquarters. The current EU policy, if NATO assets are not used, is to plan operations around national “battlegroups” before activating a shared EU planning center. Under these provisions, the EU has now taken responsibility for almost the entire mission in Bosnia – something that most Americans and Europeans had discounted in 2002. Ofﬁcially, the mission was not transferred to the EU – rather, NATO successfully concluded its mission, and the EU initiated a new mission to address some residual activities. In reality, the missions are contiguous. Only the personnel and ﬂags change; NATO remains engaged for tasks like intelligence and the pursuit of Persons Indicted For War Crimes. While EU institutional capabilities have clearly advanced as a result of the Balkan crises, issues remain between NATO and the EU. One of the most 17

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difﬁcult is the allocation of forces. The same forces that would conduct an ESDP mission could have been available for a NATO mission. One of the lingering issues with the end of the NATO Stabilization Force (SFOR) in Bosnia and the beginning of the European Force (EUFOR) was the question of a reserve. What happens if trouble erupts, as it did in Kosovo earlier in 2004, and more forces are needed? The combined stress on forces makes it difﬁcult to have separate reserves for all the NATO missions, so they end up being on call for all of them (and the reserve force is also conducting other duties – they are not ﬁreﬁghters waiting for a call). Having forces on call for both NATO missions and EUFOR creates complex questions of hierarchy of command; dedicating an EU reserve force would siphon more resources away from the total available. Another area of contention within NATO has been planning. NATO has a well-established planning center at SHAPE. The American preference has been for the EU to use this capability, rather than develop its own. The Union, however, has not wanted to be dependent on the kindness of NATO – but also many Member States did not want to support parallel planning centers (or to do force planning drills twice per year). Turkish access issues continue to complicate the matter.

Summary: NATO and the EU Europeans tend to argue that the ESDP, which developed in response to the Balkan crises, supports NATO goals. ESDP encourages the Europeans to develop enhanced military capabilities, which has been a priority in NATO for years. For example, the Union has developed the European Defence Agency. This is not a recreation of an American acquisition command – it is not set up to produce or contract for weapons system – but a way to assess the capabilities needed by the Union and coordinate their development. This supports the development of capabilities that will help NATO, because a higher degree of inter-state coordination will be acceptable with the Union context than would be within NATO. Furthermore, the European public may be more willing to fund military capabilities to support the EU than they are to support NATO. ESDP may have more appeal to the citizens and parliamentarians of some states because it is being done for Europe as opposed to for NATO or for the United States. ESDP, from St Malo onward, has been an authentic assertion of European interest and will. Capabilities developed via ESDP, whether by allies or partners, will be available for NATO-run missions; ESDP also allows the Europeans to address issues when NATO does not wish to engage as a whole. There appears to be a tacit, informal division of labor at work. The EU takes on tasks in areas where the United States does not want to go, and also takes on tasks that appear to be at a lower level of intensity than those of NATO. This is not a formal division – indeed, diplomatically it cannot be – but it ﬂows logically from Berlin Plus. Most European countries remain unwilling to support a fully separate ESDP. On 29 April 2003, Germany, France, and Luxembourg joined a Belgian initi18

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ative to develop a headquarters unit separate from NATO’s, as well as to form a more uniﬁed military unit. The other eleven EU members were not invited to participate, and they repudiated the initiative. As Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, then Dutch Foreign Minister and now NATO Secretary General said: “Belgium and France will not guarantee our security. Germany will not guarantee the security of the Netherlands. I cannot imagine a world order built against the United States.”73 Despite disagreements over how to address Iraq, this remains the case. The Balkan crises, Bosnia in particular, catalyzed European defense; the Balkans, Bosnia in particular, are now the training ground for a more effective European military capacity. The ultimate legacy of Bosnia remains in production – the European efforts may fade, Europe may become a more capable partner for American efforts, or Europe may develop into a diplomatic and military power center that is an alternative to the United States, if not an actual rival. The remainder of this book provides in-depth analysis of speciﬁc aspects of this legacy. The chapters will address the effectiveness of cooperation between European, American, and international forces and agencies. They will look at aspects of democratization, accommodation, power-sharing, and the development of civil society in a multi-ethnic state. They will address many of the most important transnational issues – corruption, terrorism, organized crime and human rights. Just as the military legacy of the Bosnian conﬂict resonates beyond the region, solutions puzzled out in the Balkans on these issues affect how other crises will be addressed.

Notes 1 Large portions of this chapter have been previously published, with different organization, in T. S. Mowle, Allies at Odds? The United States and the European Union, New York: Palgrave, 2004, pp. 113–146. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reﬂect the ofﬁcial policy or position of the United States Air Force, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. 2 M. Quinlan, European Defense Cooperation: Asset or Threat to NATO? Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2001, p. 2. 3 K. A. Eliassen, “Introduction: The New European Foreign and Security Policy Agenda,” in K. A. Eliassen (ed.), Foreign and Security Policy in the European Union, London: SAGE Publications, 1998, p. 3. 4 P.-H. Laurent, “NATO and the European Union: The Quest for a Security/Defense Identity,” in S. V. Papacosma, S. Kay, and M. R. Rubin (eds), NATO After Fifty Years, Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2001, p. 142. 5 A. Menon, France, NATO and the Limits of Independence, 1981–97: The Politics of Ambivalence, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 2000, pp. 9–12. 6 G. L. Williams and B. J. Jones, NATO and the Transatlantic Alliance in the 21st Century: The Twenty-Year Crisis, New York: Palgrave, 2001, p. 35. 7 A. Missiroli, “Towards a European Security and Defense Identity? Record – State of Play – Prospects,” in M. Jopp and H. Ojanen (eds), European Security Integration: Implications for Non-Alignment and Alliances, Helsinki: Ulkopoliittinen Instituutti, 1999, p. 24. 8 Quinlan, European Defense Cooperation, p. 21. 19

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9 M. A. Smith and G. Timmins, Building a Bigger Europe: EU and NATO Enlargement in Comparative Perspective, Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate, 2000, p. 30. 10 Williams and Jones, The Twenty-Year Crisis, p. 46. 11 F. Bozo, “Continuity or Change? The View from Europe,” in Papacosma, Kay, and Rubin, After Fifty Years, pp. 55–61. 12 T. Garden, “The United Kingdom: Making Strategic Adjustments,” in G. A. Mattox and A. R. Rachwald (eds), Enlarging NATO: The National Debates, Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001, p. 76; P. Cornish, Partnership in Crisis: The US, Europe and the Fall and Rise of NATO, London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1997, p. 32; Menon, Politics of Ambivalence, pp. 40–41. 13 Rome Declaration on Peace and Cooperation, 8 November 91. 14 M. A. Smith, NATO in the First Decade after the Cold War, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000, p. 73. 15 Cornish, Partnership in Crisis, p. 32; Menon, Politics of Ambivalence, pp. 43–47; Quinlan, European Defense Cooperation, pp. 20, 23. 16 S. L. Woodward, “International Aspects of the Wars in Former Yugoslavia: 1990–1996,” in J. Udovicˇki and J. Ridgeway (eds), Burn This House: The Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia, rev. edn, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000, p. 224. 17 S. Lucarelli, “Europe’s Response to the Yugoslav Imbroglio,” in K. E. Jørgensen (ed.), European Approaches to Crisis Management, The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1997, p. 36; Woodward, “International Aspects,” p. 225; S. L. Burg and P. Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic Conﬂict and International Intervention, Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2000, p. 85. 18 Lucarelli, “Europe’s Response,” pp. 39–40; Woodward, “International Aspects,” p. 228. 19 Burg and Shoup, War in Bosnia-Herzegovina, pp. 99–124; J. Udovicˇki and E. Sˇtitkovac, “Bosnia and Hercegovina: The Second War,” in Udovicˇki and Ridgeway, Burn This House, p. 185. 20 Quinlan, European Defense Cooperation, pp. 20–21. 21 W. Bert, The Reluctant Superpower: United States’ Policy in Bosnia, 1991–95, London: Macmillan, 1997, pp. 65–123. 22 Ibid., 193–210. 23 R. C. Holbrooke, To End a War, rev. edn, New York: Modern Library, 1999, p. 318. 24 S. Sikavica, “The Army’s Collapse,” in Udovicˇki and Ridgeway, Burn This House, p. 148. 25 I. H. Daalder, Getting to Dayton: The Making of America’s Bosnia Policy, Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2000, pp. 15–19. 26 D. Rieff, Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995, p. 28. 27 Burg and Shoup, War in Bosnia-Herzegovina, pp. 146–149. 28 Daalder, Getting to Dayton, pp. 31–32. 29 Lucarelli, “Europe’s Response,” p. 53. 30 D. C. Foyle, “Public Opinion and Bosnia: Anticipating Disaster,” in R. G. Carter (ed.), Contemporary Cases in U.S. Foreign Policy: From Terrorism to Trade, Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2002, p. 44. 31 O. Zˇunic, “Operations Flash and Storm,” in B. Magasˇ and Ivo Zˇanic (eds), The War in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1991–1995, London: Frank Cass, 2001, pp. 69–75. 32 T. Ripley, Operation Deliberate Force: The UN and NATO Campaign in Bosnia 1995, Lancaster: CDISS, 1999, pp. 107–122; B. Crawford, “The Bosnian Road to NATO Enlargement,” in R. W. Rauchhaus (ed.), Explaining NATO Enlargement, London: Frank Cass, 2001, p. 51; Lucarelli, “Europe’s Response,” p. 56. 20

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33 Ripley, Operation Deliberate Force, pp. 130–138; Daalder, Getting to Dayton, pp. 44–45. 34 Ripley, Operation Deliberate Force, p. 45. 35 D. Rohde, Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe’s Worst Massacre since World War II, Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1998, pp. 77–159; Holbrooke, To End a War, pp. 69–70. 36 Rohde, Endgame, pp. 290–301; Bert, Reluctant Superpower, p. 221. 37 Ripley, Operation Deliberate Force, pp. 157–173; Daalder, Getting to Dayton, pp. 73–77. 38 D. L. Dittman and D. L. Dawkins, Deliberate Force: NATO’s First Extended Air Operation: The View from AFSOUTH, Alexander, Va.: Center for Naval Analyses, 1998, p. 12. 39 Daalder, Getting to Dayton, p. 63. 40 Ripley, Operation Deliberate Force, pp. 196–221; Daalder, Getting to Dayton, p. 114; M. Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan War, New York: Penguin Books, 1992, pp. 650–651. 41 Ripley, Operation Deliberate Force, pp. 228–274. 42 Ripley, Operation Deliberate Force, pp. 281–297; Holbrooke, To End a War, pp. 143–144. 43 Holbrooke, To End a War, p. 152. 44 Crawford, “Bosnian Road,” pp. 54–56; Bert, Reluctant Superpower, p. 227. 45 S. Clément, “Introduction,” in S. Clément (ed.), The Issues Raised by Bosnia and the Transatlantic Debate, Paris: Institute for Security Studies, Western European Union, 1998, p. 4. 46 R. D. Asmus, “Double Enlargement: Redeﬁning the Atlantic Partnership after the Cold War,” in D. C. Gompert and F. S. Larrabee (eds), America and Europe: A Partnership for a New Era, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 39. 47 Quinlan, European Defense Cooperation, p. 18. 48 M. J. Brenner, and G. Parmentier, Reconcilable Differences: U.S.–French Relations in the New Era, Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2002, pp. 45–59; P. Gallis, “France: NATO’s ‘Renovation’ and Enlargement,” in Mattox and Rachwald (eds), Enlarging NATO, pp. 57–59; Menon, Politics of Ambivalence, pp. 49–53; Smith, First Decade, p. 94; Cornish, Partnership in Crisis, pp. 81–94. 49 Quinlan, European Defense Cooperation, p. 26. 50 T. Blair, “Speech to the French National Assembly,” 24 March 1998. 51 P. van Ham, Europe’s New Defense Ambitions: Implications for NATO, the US, and Russia, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany: The George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, 2000, pp. 5–6. 52 D. A. Leurdijk and D. Zandee, Kosovo: From Crisis to Crisis, Aldershot, Hampshire, England: Ashgate, 2001, pp. 28–31. 53 J. D. Ramirez and M. Szaprio, “The EU: Old Wine from New Bottles,” in T. Weymouth and S. Henig (eds), The Kosovo Crisis: The Last American War in Europe? London: Reuters, 2001, pp. 125–127. 54 W. K. Clark, Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat, New York: Public Affairs, 2001, pp. 116, 154. 55 Joint Declaration on European Defense, 4 December 1998. 56 Cited in Quinlan, European Defense Cooperation, p. 50. 57 Cited in J. Borawski and T.-D. Young, NATO after 2000: The Future of the EuroAtlantic Alliance, Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2001, p. 38. 58 Cited in T. G. Carpenter, “NATO’s New Strategic Concept: Coherent Blueprint or Conceptual Muddle?” in T. G. Carpenter (ed.), NATO Enters the 21st Century, London: Frank Cass, 2001, p. 21. 21

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59 Borawski and Young, NATO after 2000, pp. 7–12. 60 Brenner and Parmentier, Reconcilable Differences, p. 63. 61 P. J. Anderson, “Air Strike: NATO Astride Kosovo,” in Weymouth and Henig, Kosovo Crisis, p. 196; Ramirez and Szaprio, “The EU,” pp. 134–135; van Ham, Europe’s New Defense Ambitions, p. 8. 62 “U.S. Peacekeeping Contributions;” “The European Union and South Eastern Europe,” EU Presidency Factsheet, December 2000. 63 Leurdijk and Zandee, From Crisis to Crisis, pp. 118–124. 64 S. L. Rearden, “NATO’s Post-Cold War Strategy: The Role of Combined Joint Task Forces,” in Papacosma, Kay, and Rubin, NATO After Fifty Years, 77. 65 van Ham, Europe’s New Defense Ambitions, pp. 9–21. 66 “ESDP: Increased Capabilities for Crisis Management,” European Union Factsheet, June 2001; Centre for Defence Studies, Headline Goals; Quinlan, European Defense Cooperation, pp. 33–45. 67 Quinlan, European Defense Cooperation, pp. 46–47. 68 B. Graham and R. G. Kaiser, “NATO Ministers Back U.S. Plan for Rapid Reaction Force,” Washington Post, 25 September 2002, p. A24. 69 Prague Summit Declaration of the North Atlantic Council, 21 November 2002, paragraph 4a. 70 Presidency Conclusions, Copenhagen European Council, 12–13 December 2002, Annex II. 71 Ibid., paragraphs 28–29. 72 “Operation ‘Concordia,’ EU Military Operation in former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia FYROM,” European Council Press Release, http://ue.eu.int/arym/ index.asp?lang=EN, as of 1 September 2003. 73 J. Vinocur, “Anti-war powers to join forces,” International Herald Tribune, 30 April 2003, http://www.iht.com/.

22

2 POWER-SHARING OR PARTITION? History’s lessons for keeping the peace in Bosnia1 Alan J. Kuperman

Ten years after the Dayton accords, Bosnia’s political status remains in doubt. Supreme authority still rests in the hands of an unelected international ofﬁcial. Security is still ensured by international peacekeepers. And Bosnia’s two main political entities – a Serb Republic and a Muslim-Croat Federation – still disagree about whether or not they should be merged into one. This limbo status is untenable for a variety of reasons, including waning international will for the high costs of sustaining Bosnia as a protectorate, the EU’s ongoing accession process, and the impending consideration of ﬁnal status for neighboring Kosovo. The fundamental question has remained the same ever since Yugoslavia began to disintegrate in the early 1990s: can and should Bosnia be forged into a unitary state – and if so on what terms – or should it be partitioned along ethnic lines, with Serb areas possibly joining neighboring Serbia? I have detailed elsewhere how this question originally plunged Bosnia into war in 1992.2 Serbs inside and outside the republic declared in 1991 that they would not peacefully accept Bosnia’s secession from Yugoslavia unless it ﬁrst were divided into autonomous ethnic cantons. By contrast, Bosnia’s Muslims and Croats, who together represented a majority of the population, favored a unitary state (though for some Croats in Herzegovina this was merely instrumental to a longer-term plan to unite with neighboring Croatia). The European Community’s representative, Jose Cutileiro, initially embraced the Serb view as the best hope of avoiding violence. He declared that the EC would withhold recognition of Bosnia’s independence until all sides accepted his plan to divide Bosnia into ethnic cantons, thereby brieﬂy persuading the Muslims and Croats to accept. Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was ecstatic and proclaimed “a great day for Bosnia.”3 The United States, however, opposed this approach and convinced the EC in March 1992 to join in pledging to recognize Bosnia the following month even without cantonization, whereupon the Muslims and Croats abandoned the agreement. In April 1992, the EC and United States did recognize a 23

ALAN J. KUPERMAN

unitary independent Bosnia, and the Serbs responded with a brutal offensive that captured and ethnically cleansed two-thirds of Bosnia’s territory within weeks, establishing a de facto ethnic partition (except for a few Muslim enclaves in Serb-controlled, eastern Bosnia). A similar debate about ethnic partition helps explain why this bloody war persisted for three and a half years. Once ﬁghting started, Bosnia’s Serbs insisted that for security purposes the ethnic division that they still demanded would now have to include a single contiguous Serb territory. By contrast, Western diplomats during the ﬁrst year of war advocated the Vance-Owen plan, which harked back to Cutileiro’s patchwork cantonization that was now unacceptable to the Serbs. Only when international mediators acquiesced to the Serb insistence on contiguous territory, in the Owen-Stoltenberg plan of summer 1993 and the Contact Group plan of the following summer, did negotiated agreement even become a possibility. But the Serbs still resisted for two years because these proposals would have required them to surrender 30 percent of the territory they controlled. Only when they lost that territory militarily in the summer of 1995 – as a result of the United States forging a Muslim-Croat alliance, strengthening it by overlooking violations of the UN arms embargo, and then leading NATO bombing of Serb military targets – did the Serbs agree to negotiate peace. The Dayton accords intentionally left unresolved the question of Bosnia’s ultimate political status in order to facilitate achievement of at least temporary peace. During the negotiations, the Serbs continued to insist on ethnic division, while the Muslims demanded a unitary state. To appease each, U.S. negotiator Richard Holbrooke included both concepts in the accords – a militarily and politically autonomous Serb republic within a unitary Bosnian state – even though these represented two fundamentally incompatible visions for Bosnia’s future. Ever since, the international community has tilted to one side, utilizing carrots and sticks in an attempt to persuade the Serbs to accept a unitary Bosnia – but to little avail. The ambiguity of the Dayton accords may have been essential to ending Bosnia’s war, but that uncertainty has now become a liability. Final status must be addressed, and it is a decision that could have great consequence for the welfare and security of Bosnia and the wider Balkans. The optimal answer rests in part on the particularities of the region, such as its recent history of warfare, the unresolved status of Kosovo, a still fragile peace in Macedonia, Montenegro’s recent divorce from Serbia, and nascent secessionist movements in parts of Serbia including Vojvodina, the Presevo Valley, and the Sandzak (shared with Montenegro). But insight also can be gained by looking at the worldwide record since World War II of attempts to share power following ethnic civil war. Such an analysis reveals how rarely and under what special conditions these efforts have succeeded, which suggests that current international efforts in Bosnia are ﬂawed and should be adjusted. The next section of this chapter reviews the academic debate on the feas24

POWER-SHARING OR PARTITION?

ibility of power-sharing versus partition after ethnic civil war. The following section examines the six successful cases of such power-sharing since 1945, detailing why all but one provide little optimism for Bosnia. The subsequent section explains why a host of other allegedly successful cases do not actually qualify as power-sharing resolution of ethnic civil war, at least not yet, and therefore offer no model for such a solution. The concluding section draws lessons from this historical overview to formulate a prescription for consolidating peace in Bosnia.

The Humpty Dumpty theory of ethnic conﬂict The academic literature contains two perspectives on the ability of ethnic groups to share political power after ﬁghting a civil war against each other. One view contends that ethnic groups – as opposed to ideological adversaries – cannot return to living under common political authority after civil war because of a lingering “security dilemma” that has prevented any successful instance of such powersharing. The alternate view claims that power-sharing is no more difﬁcult after an ethnic civil war than an ideological one, and that it actually happens quite regularly. My own recent research, and that of others, suggests the truth lies in between. Power-sharing after ethnic civil war is indeed much harder, although not impossible, which has provided lessons for Bosnia that have been largely ignored. Most famously pessimistic, Chaim Kaufmann has argued that once ethnic civil wars reach a threshold level of violence, opposing ethnic groups lose the ability to live peacefully intermingled under a common political authority. The root cause, he argues, is a security dilemma between individuals of opposing ethnic groups, exacerbated by the war. Following a peace agreement, if members of these groups ﬁnd themselves living side-by-side, absent the clear ethnic power hierarchy that results from one side’s victory, they inevitably will lash out against each other – in self-defense, if not in anger – thereby re-igniting the civil war.4 Kaufmann argues that such security dilemmas are much worse following ethnic civil wars, because identities cannot be hidden or changed as they can after ideological civil wars. He concludes that this security dilemma, and therefore ethnic civil wars, can be ended in only three ways: 1 2 3

military victory by one side to establish a clear ethnic hierarchy; suppression of the conﬂict by a third-party military occupation; or physical separation of ethnic groups into defensible enclaves.

To put it crudely, because of the persistent security dilemma following ethnic civil wars, a multi-ethnic Humpty-Dumpty cannot be put back together again. Kaufmann thus offers a radical prescription to the international community: not only should it stop seeking power-sharing agreements to resolve violent ethnic conﬂicts, it should instead facilitate population exchanges to achieve ethnic separation, as a means to lasting peace. 25

ALAN J. KUPERMAN

Kaufmann defends his theory based on the ostensible universe of “ethnic civil wars resolved from 1944–1994,” derived from databases assembled by Ted Robert Gurr.5 Of the twenty-seven wars he says were completed during this period, twelve ended by military victory, ﬁve by de facto or de jure partition, two by outside military occupation, and eight by negotiated agreements other than partition. On initial inspection, the last eight appear at odds with Kaufmann’s theory, because they are peace settlements achieved without partition. Kaufmann, however, argues that all eight of these settlements depended on grants of full or partial autonomy to a regionally concentrated ethnic group, so that – like partition – they are essentially based on physical separation of ethnic groups. As he writes: The data supports the argument that separation of groups is the key to ending ethnic civil wars. Every case in which the state was preserved by agreement involved a regionally concentrated minority, and in every case the solution reinforced the ethnic role in politics by allowing the regional minority group to control its own destiny through regional autonomy for the areas where it forms a majority of the population. There is not a single case where non-ethnic civil politics were created or restored by reconstruction of ethnic identities, power-sharing coalitions, or state-building.6 By contrast, T. David Mason and Patrick J. Fett ﬁnd that ethnic civil wars are no less likely than ideological ones to end by negotiated power-sharing. Drawing on the Correlates of War database (see www.correlatesofwar.org), they examine all civil wars settled during 1945–1992, a period almost identical to that of Kaufmann. They ﬁnd that 26 percent of ethnic civil wars ended by such agreement, even higher than (and statistically indistinguishable from) the 21 percent of ideological civil wars they say ended in this manner. As they observe: “The ﬁnding of no relationship between the ethnic basis of the conﬂict and the likelihood of a settlement is . . . at odds with most of the literature.”7 Comparison of the studies reveals several reasons for this discrepancy.8 First, the two rely on remarkably different databases of “all” ethnic civil wars since World War II (see Table 2.1). Although each database contains roughly the same number of cases (twenty-seven and twenty-eight), only six civil wars are found in both. Thus, each database excludes at least three-quarters of the other’s cases. Additional differences in operational deﬁnitions – most fundamentally, whether negotiated agreements that provide for some degree of regional autonomy should be categorized as “power-sharing” or “ethnic separation” – also contribute to the divergent conclusions. Finally, some of the apparent discrepancy results from both studies rhetorically exaggerating the signiﬁcance of their statistical ﬁndings. For example, Kaufmann highlights that all negotiated settlements involved regionally concentrated ethnic groups as evidence that de facto partition promotes peace, but even if his statistics were accurate – which is 26

POWER-SHARING OR PARTITION?

Table 2.1 Little overlap in two databases of “all” resolved ethnic civil warsa State

Ethnic group

Mason-Fett

Angola Azerbaijan Bangladesh Burma Burundi Burundi Chad China China China Ethiopia Georgia India India India-Hyderabad Indonesia Indonesia Indonesia Indonesia Iran Iraq Iraq Israel Jordan Lebanon Lebanon Liberia Mozambique Nicaragua Nigeria Nigeria Pakistan Pakistan Papua New Guinea Philippines Rwanda Rwanda Somalia Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Uganda Uganda USSR USSR Western Sahara Zaire Zimbabwe

Ovimbundu Armenians Chittagong Karens Hutu Hutu Various Tibetans Tibetans Uighurs, etc. Tigreans/Eritreans Abkhazians Nagas Tripuras Hyderabadis Acehnese Acehnese Papuans Timorese Kurds Kurds Shiites Palestinians Palestinians Various Various Various Ndau/Shona Miskitos Ibo Maitatsine Bengalis Baluchis Bougainville

1975–1991

Moros Tutsi Tutsi Northern clans Basques JVPb Various Baganda Various Lithuanians Ukrainians Saharawi Katangans Blacks

Kaufmann

Overlapping cases

1988– 1975–1989 1945– 1972 1988 1980–1988 1950–1951 1956–1959 1974–1991

1959–1989 1980 1961–1991 1992–1993 1952–1975 1967–1989

1 case for each 2 cases for Kaufmann

1948 1953 1975–1980s 1964–1986 1975–1977 1974–1980s 1945–1980s 1959, 1961–1975 1960– 1991 1968–1993 1970 1958 1975–1990 1989–1992 1979–1992 1981–1988 1967–1970 1967–1970 1980–1984 1971 1973–1977 1988

1 case for each 2 cases for Mason-Fett

1 case for each

1972–1987 1963–1964 1990–1994 1988– 1959–1980s 1971 1963–1972 1966 1980–1988 1945–1952 1944–1950s 1975–1983 1960–1965 1972–1979

Source: Copyright from “Is Partition Really the Only Hope? Reconciling Contradictory Findings About Ethnic Civil Wars,” Security Studies, Vol. 13, No. 4 (summer 2004), pp. 314–349 by Alan J. Kuperman. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Group, PLC, http://taylorandfrancis.com. Notes a Kaufmann’s database spans 1944–1994; Mason and Fett’s 1945–1992. b JVP was in reality neither an ethnic, religious nor other identity group.

27

ALAN J. KUPERMAN

debatable, as elaborated below – his inference ignores the fact that such regional concentration has failed to avert the outbreak of violence in the ﬁrst place. More recent research by Rothchild, Hartzell, Hoddie, and Lake suggests the truth lies somewhere in between. Though not impossible, ethnic civil war is indeed more difﬁcult to resolve by negotiated agreement than its ideological variant.9 Moreover, negotiated settlements of ethnic civil war are less likely to relapse into war if they rely on regional autonomy or partition rather than centralized power-sharing. A 1999 study by the ﬁrst two authors found that peace agreements after ethnic civil wars were 40 percent less stable than after ideological ones, and that regional autonomy provided more stability than powersharing such as federalism.10 More recently, Hartzell and Hoddie have found that among civil wars ended by negotiation, ethnic wars were a remarkable four-toﬁve times more likely to resume.11 A study by the ﬁrst three authors also found that partition provided longer peace than other settlements. This implies that ethnic civil wars settled by power-sharing are the most prone to fail.12 Moreover, Lake and Rothchild ﬁnd that regional autonomy can only serve as an interim solution, because it inevitably devolves toward either hard partition or recentralization of authority. As they write, “We ﬁnd no evidence of successful institutionalization of [territorial power-sharing] provisions in a post-war constitutional order.”13 Thus, the only long-term alternative to partition appears to be centralized power-sharing, but as noted above agreements based on such powersharing are the most prone to failure. What remains unclear are the long-term prospects for peace achieved initially by regional autonomy that is later eroded through re-centralization – a pattern that is common according to Lake and Rothchild, and which is currently being pursued by the international community in Bosnia.14 The ﬁnding that partition reduces the likelihood of renewed civil war between ethnic groups is hardly surprising. Few would dispute that physically separating two groups reduces the security dilemma between them and the opportunities for friction to ﬂare into violence. Rather, the questions about partition have always been three: 1 2 3

Is partition the only feasible negotiated solution to ethnic civil war? If not, do the beneﬁts of partition outweigh the human costs of organized population transfers? Does partition increase the likelihood of violent conﬂict within each of the separated groups?

The primary theoretical shortcoming in Kaufmann’s work is his assumption that each ethnic group is monolithic, at least during and after inter-ethnic civil war. In reality, ethnic groups have internal divisions, even during violent conﬂict against other groups, which has two important implications. First, it is precisely such intra-ethnic divisions, which Kaufmann assumes away, that can facilitate the inter-ethnic power-sharing accords that Kaufmann says are impossible. As 28

POWER-SHARING OR PARTITION?

Barak illustrates in the case of Lebanon in 1989, power-sharing sometimes requires that factions of opposing ethnic groups realize they have a common interest against factions within their own ethnic groups.15 Second, according to Licklider and Atlas, the hidden divides within ostensibly monolithic ethnic groups explain why settlements of ethnic civil war often fail to hold. The cause of renewed war, they say, is “often a breakdown in relations among former allies, not former foes.”16 These dynamics suggest several important caveats to Kaufmann’s prescription for the international community to promote partition as a means of resolving ethnic war. First, partition may obstruct some paths to peace that rely on alliances of factions within opposing ethnic groups. Second, partition may give rise to violence within one or more of the separated ethnic groups. Finally, partition itself often requires the use of force and invariably rips many people from their homes. Despite these potential downsides of partition – the forceful dislocation of peoples, obstruction of moderate inter-ethnic alliances, and fostering of new conﬂicts within separated groups – partition may be the lesser evil in cases where it can end otherwise insoluble, ethnic violence. To ﬁgure out when to apply this draconian prescription requires further research into the determinants of success for partition, power-sharing, and hybrid solutions such as regional autonomy, as well as the costs and risks of each. In the absence of such data, it is irresponsible to tout any solution – whether partition or power-sharing – as a silver bullet to resolve all ethnic conﬂict. But as a ﬁrst step it is useful to explore if, and under what conditions, power-sharing has ever succeeded at ending ethnic civil war.

Ethnic civil wars are rarely resolved by power-sharing Since World War II, only six ethnic civil wars have been resolved by powersharing agreement: Lebanon-1958, Sudan-1972, Zimbabwe-1979, Mozambique1992, South Africa-1994 and Guatemala-1996. Other apparent success stories can be rejected on at least one of the ﬁve following grounds: 1

2

3

Regional autonomy. As Kaufmann argues, a negotiated agreement based on substantial regional autonomy may be tantamount to partition, relying on a division rather than a sharing of power. To be consistent with his theory, however, such a settlement must include defensible borders and regional control over security forces – otherwise peace relies at least partly on power-sharing. Peace enforcement. If outside forces ensure order after the signing of a power-sharing accord, peace can be attributed to enforcement rather than power-sharing.17 In such cases, the true test of power-sharing is whether peace persists after withdrawal of outside forces. Disguised victory. If the side that is losing a civil war signs a power-sharing 29

ALAN J. KUPERMAN

4

5

agreement, the peace may be attributable to negotiated surrender, rather than power-sharing.18 In such a case, the test is whether the stronger side actually shares any signiﬁcant power during implementation of the agreement. Non-ethnic. If a civil war divides members of at least one of the contending ethnic groups, the war may be ideological rather than ethnic, in which case its resolution by power-sharing does not contradict Kaufmann’s theory. However, some intra-group conﬂict occurs in all ethnic civil wars, so the determining factor is whether the main schism in the war runs between or across ethnic groups.19 Pause in ﬁghting. If civil war resumes after a brief period of post-war sharing of power, the original war may never actually have been resolved. A reasonable test is whether such peace lasts ﬁve years – a respite difﬁcult to reconcile with Kaufmann’s theory. Moreover, if renewed war involves different combatants from the original, it would not necessarily vitiate the success of power-sharing in resolving the initial conﬂict.20

The six cases of power-sharing resolution of ethnic civil war that satisfy all these tests are detailed below and summarized in Table 2.2. This is followed by a brief explanation of why other putative cases do not qualify. Lebanon-1958 Lebanon’s 1958 civil war arose when the country’s pro-West, Christian-led government was opposed by a coalition of Arab nationalists, Muslim militants, and Christian political challengers to the president. The country quickly divided along sectarian lines, however, and violence occurred between rather than within sectarian groups. After an estimated 1,300 to 2,500 deaths, an agreement resumed power-sharing between Lebanon’s three primary groups – Maronite Christians, Sunni Muslims, and Shiite Muslims. The Sunni were not regionally concentrated, and the agreement did not involve regional autonomy but rather a consociational sharing of central authority. Although U.S. troops intervened for three months, they did not engage the combatants, and there was no other outside peace enforcement.21 The agreement did not represent the surrender of any group, because each retained its pre-war share of political power: as before, the president would be Christian, the prime minister Sunni, and the speaker of parliament Shiite. The president had a veto, could dissolve parliament, and could ﬁre or appoint the premier, who had the power to form a cabinet but only with the support of parliament, which had seats reserved 6:5 in favor of the Christians (based roughly on the 1932 census). In addition, civil service posts and budgetary allocations were doled out by quota.22 There are two grounds on which this case could be questioned as powersharing resolution of ethnic civil war: (1) whether the ﬁghting actually was ethnic; and (2) whether peace was more than just a pause in ﬁghting. Ideological 30

31

1994

1996

Guatemala

1979

Zimbabwe

South Africa

1972

Sudan

1992

1958

Lebanon

Mozambique

Year

State

No autonomous security forces or defensible borders in constitution No

No

No. Autonomy did not include autonomous security forces or defensible border No

No. Sunni not concentrated

No

No

No

No. Only 3-month, British-led monitoring force

No

No. Only 3-month U.S. intervention

Regional autonomy? Peace enforcement?

Table 2.2 Six cases qualify as power-sharing resolution of ethnic civil war

No. Both sides made major concessions

No. Whites retain economic dominance

No. Whites guaranteed parliamentary seats, pensions, payment for land No

No

No. Returned to consociational power-sharing

Disguised victory?

No. Started as ideological, but became ethnic, even verging on genocidal

No. Though partly ideological, the sides divided mainly along ethnic lines No. Tri-ethnic: White, Zulu, Xhosa

No

No. Despite ideological tension (pro-Arab vs. proWest), ﬁghting was inter-ethnic No

Non-ethnic war?

No resumption yet

No resumption yet

No resumption yet

No. Although after 20 years, land seizures caused partial white exodus

No. After 11 years, new war spurred by power struggle within north, not insecurity

No. After 17 years, new war triggered by Palestinians, not orginal combatants

Just a pause in war?

ALAN J. KUPERMAN

factors, including pan-Arabism that was fed in 1958 by the temporary uniﬁcation of Egypt and Syria and revolution in Iraq, helped motivate the outbreak of ﬁghting and the subsequent intervention. Accordingly, the war is often characterized as an Arab nationalist revolt against a pro-West regime.23 But as Cobban observes: “In Beirut, the city was divided along largely sectarian lines, with the Sunni-dominated areas held by the rebels and the Christian-dominated areas in the hands of the loyalists.” She adds that by September 1958, “which saw many of the bloodiest incidents . . . many regions of the country became polarized along sectarian lines.”24 Likewise, Meo writes, “the great majority of Muslims, who constituted almost half of the population, sympathized with and supported the objectives of the revolution. The other half of the population, the Christians, however, were overwhelmingly in favor of the regime.”25 Salibi similarly explains, “the insurrection had spread to nearly all Moslem and Druze districts,” driven by a combination of pan-Arabism and Muslim resentment of perceived Christian advantage, both inﬂamed by political aspirants.26 Attié’s recent study also notes the “predominance of the confessional nature of the Lebanese crisis,” and reports that “the divisions were almost totally along sectarian lines.”27 As in virtually all ethnic wars, a fraction of each group, notably in the elite, crossed over to ally with another for ideological, political or personal reasons, but this does not invalidate the main sectarian divide. Peace from renewed power-sharing was only temporary, but it did endure for a remarkable seventeen years in a region of intense instability. Moreover, the eventual breakdown of peace resulted mainly from an exogenous factor – Palestinian refugees armed by external supporters – rather than a security dilemma between the parties of the original war. As Seaver writes about the renewal of war in 1975: “Although both the Maronite leaders . . . and the Sunni oligarchs . . . agreed that the Sunni-Maronite ruling formula should not be altered, the Palestinian issue ultimately proved fatally divisive.”28 Kaufmann’s exclusion of the case from his database cannot be justiﬁed by the relatively low level of deaths, because his database includes ethnic conﬂicts with even lower totals: Nicaragua-Miskitos from 1981 to 1988; Spain-Basques from 1959 to 1980s; and Bougainville-Papua in 1988.29 Sudan-1972 Following a nine-year civil war that entailed a quarter-million battleﬁeld deaths, Sudan’s 1972 agreement brought more than a decade of peace between northern Arabs and southern Christians and animists – until another civil war broke out in 1983. This peace cannot be rejected as a mere pause in ﬁghting, not only because of its duration but because the second war arose from the north’s internal politics rather than an unresolved security dilemma with the south.30 The agreement did grant a degree of regional autonomy and thus might be dismissed by Kaufmann as de facto partition. But the agreement did not establish a defensible border or full regional control over security forces, two factors he insists are 32

POWER-SHARING OR PARTITION?

essential to resolving an ethnic civil war by partition. Thus, his theory cannot account for how this ethnic civil war was resolved for eleven years by powersharing. Zimbabwe-1979 The civil war in Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia) from 1972 to 1979 pitted the ruling white minority against a coalition of black rebels, resulting in 12,000 battle deaths. A power-sharing agreement, including integration of the opposing armed forces, was signed in late 1979, after both sides faced a series of sticks and carrots from external supporters.31 The white minority government agreed to accept black majority rule, and in turn the blacks agreed to reserve white seats in parliament for seven years, honor pension obligations to white ofﬁcials, and not seize white lands without payment. In the ﬁrst years after the agreement, the black coalition splintered along ethnic lines, as Matabele supporters of Joshua Nkomo’s ZAPU party were marginalized by Robert Mugabe’s Shona-dominated, ruling ZANU party. In 1982, frustrated Matabele rebels began to seize white lands. Remarkably, Mugabe’s black government did not acquiesce to the seizures, but rather fought a war against its erstwhile black allies in order to defend the rights of its erstwhile white enemies. The government successfully quashed the Matabele insurgency by 1987, thereby sustaining the core of the original black-white, power-sharing agreement.32 The case stands up to all ﬁve potential objections as a successful resolution of ethnic civil war through power-sharing. The agreement did not grant regional autonomy. The British-led monitoring force had neither the size nor the mandate to conduct enforcement and withdrew within three months.33 The agreement did not disguise a victory by the blacks because the whites were nowhere near defeat on the battleﬁeld and the power-sharing agreement was fully implemented after the war, preserving white economic dominance for many years. The conﬂict clearly was ethnic, as the main divide was black–white. Admittedly, the black rebel coalition during the war masked an internal black divide, but ethnic wars typically subsume temporarily other societal divides. Though lowlevel violence resumed shortly after the peace agreement, it was a struggle for power among blacks, not resumption of the original ethnic war. The most remarkable fact about Zimbabwe was noted aptly two decades after the peace agreement: “There has been no renewed violence between whites and blacks to date.”34 A few years later, economic failure and Mugabe’s faltering political support led to a temporary renewal of violent seizures of white farms, which triggered some white emigration.35 But even if this low-level violence represented the partial demise of the 1979 agreement, it would not invalidate twenty years of peaceful power-sharing.

33

ALAN J. KUPERMAN

Mozambique-1992 Mozambique’s thirteen-year civil war, entailing 200,000 battleﬁeld deaths, is often coded as ideological because it pitted the communist FRELIMO government against RENAMO rebels supported by anti-communist Rhodesia and South Africa. But RENAMO drew its leadership from the Ndau people in the geographic center of the state, while the FRELIMO government was led and supported mostly by ethnic groups in the south. Some observers such as Michel Cahen emphasize that RENAMO never relied exclusively on one ethnic group nor received unanimous support from any ethnic group and did receive external support, concluding that, “while ethnic factors were undoubtedly a factor in the war, it cannot be deﬁned as an interethnic conﬂict.”36 By contrast many others, including Mason and Fett, code the war as ethnic. Labels aside, it is indisputable that opposing ethnic groups killed each other for years, leading to sharp polarization of identity. Thus, according to Kaufmann’s theory, the groups should not have been able to achieve peace by sharing central authority. Yet, that is precisely what they have done for more than a dozen years since the 1992 peace agreement. South Africa-1994 The 1948 Apartheid racial discrimination policy of South Africa’s white government spawned an armed black opposition, eventually spiraling into a civil war staring in the late-1980s that killed thousands. In the early-1990s, spurred partly by the white business community, South African president F. W. de Klerk initiated negotiations that led to an agreement to share power through democratic elections in 1994.37 The war clearly was ethnic, involving three main factions: white government security forces, Zulu warriors of the Inkatha Freedom Party, and the mainly Xhosa ﬁghters of the African National Congress.38 Although a 1993 draft constitution granted limited regional autonomy to nine provinces, it never envisioned autonomous provincial security forces guarding defensible borders. Moreover, the ﬁnal 1996 constitution scaled back even this limited autonomy.39 The peace did not represent a disguised victory, because no side was defeated on the battleﬁeld, and all sides ultimately made signiﬁcant compromises: whites surrendered control of the government, the ANC permitted continued white economic dominance, and the Zulu accepted less than full autonomy for KwaZulu-Natal province. No outside peacekeepers were deployed. Though low-level political violence persists between Zulu and ANC supporters, and high crime rates have spurred some white emigration, ethnic civil war was ended by power-sharing and has not recurred for more than a decade.40

34

POWER-SHARING OR PARTITION?

Guatemala-1996 Although Guatemala’s civil war began in 1960 as an ideological struggle, it evolved by 1980 into an ethnic war pitting the ruling minority elite of European heritage versus the majority, indigenous Mayan populace who fueled a rebel movement. Peaking in intensity from 1981 to 1983, army violence killed an estimated 200,000 Mayans during the war, but failed to defeat the rebels. Accordingly, the two sides turned to negotiations and in late 1996 signed a multifaceted peace deal, agreeing to end the war, disarm the rebels, halt army human rights abuses, ensure equality for the indigenous, and share power over the whole territory in a unitary democracy.41 The agreement was not a disguised victory because the government was forced to make major concessions before the rebels would agree to peace. The agreement did not grant regional autonomy, nor did it rely on outside military intervention. Although implementation has been slow and bumpy, especially during a conservative regime from 1999 to 2003, progress is substantial. The rebels have demobilized; the army has downsized; armed patrols have been reduced; free and fair elections have been held; refugees have returned; and discrimination has been outlawed. Most important, as a 2003 UN report noted, “The armed conﬂict has deﬁnitively ended, as has the state policy of human rights abuses that characterized the conﬂict.”42 Though work remains, the implementation of power-sharing is exempliﬁed by the fact that both candidates in the December 2003 presidential run-off election called for helping the indigenous.43 Even more remarkable, although the more conservative candidate won, he appointed to his cabinet the Nobel Prizewinning indigenous activist Rigoberto Menchu to oversee implementation of the agreement.44 The genocidal violence of Guatemala’s ethnic civil war is exactly the kind that Kaufmann says should prevent power-sharing agreements of the type that has successfully kept the peace in Guatemala for more than nine years.

Disqualiﬁed cases Other apparent power-sharing settlements of ethnic civil war cannot be coded as such because they fail one or more of the above tests (as summarized in Table 2.3). For example, the Philippines is disqualiﬁed on two grounds: de facto partition and continued violence. In 1996, the Catholic-dominated government gave substantial autonomy to the Moro, a group of Muslims concentrated in southern islands, permitting them to maintain a security force of 20,000. The main rebel group has honored the cease-ﬁre, but a splinter organization ﬁghts on.45 Three other cases fail because of the presence of occupation forces, indicating that peace may stem from enforcement rather than power-sharing. In Northern Ireland, 12,000 British forces were still committed to peacekeeping six years after the 1998 Good Friday agreement.46 In Tajikistan, some 15,000–25,000 Russian troops have been present since its 1997 peace agreement.47 In Lebanon, until recently, at least 15,000 Syrian troops remained after 35

36

Year

1972

1980

1987

1988

1988

1989

State

India (Nagaland)

Spain (Basqueland)

Nicaragua (Miskito areas)

India (Tripura)

Papua New Guinea (Bougainville)

Lebanon

Yes

Regional autonomy?

Yes. 15,000 or more Syrian troops until 2005 withdrawal. Unknown if peace will survive their departure

Yes. 200,000 Indian troops

Peace enforcement? Yes. Nagas generally consider the agreement a surrender

Disguised victory?

Table 2.3 Disqualiﬁed cases fail at least one test of power-sharing resolution of ethnic civil war

Yes. Violence continued for at least a decade. Now a new agreement, but too soon to tell

Yes. India did not implement agreement. Violence continues

Yes. Violence continues at historic, low level

Yes. Low-level violence continues

Just a pause in war?

Yes. Only a few hundred killed

Yes. Fewer than 800 killed in 35 years

Never a “war?”

37

1997

1998

N. Ireland (UK)

1995

Mali

Bangladesh (Chittagong)

1995

Croatia (E. Slavonia)

1997

1995

Bosnia

Tajikistan

1994

Georgia (Abkhazia)

1996

1993

Israel (Palestine)

Philippines

1992

Georgia (S. Ossetia)

Yes, including for 20,000 local forces

Yes, though being eroded

Yes, though without formal agreement

Yes, though without formal agreement

Yes. British troops still deployed

Yes. 15,000–25,000 Russian troops

Yes. 7,000 peacekeepers remain

Yes. Russian troops

Yes. Russian troops

Yes

Yes. Government has not implemented agreement. New violence in 2003

Yes. Violence continues

Yes. Violence continues

Yes. Fewer than 1,000 killed in ﬁve years of conﬂict

ALAN J. KUPERMAN

the power-sharing 1989 Taif agreement ended that country’s second civil war.48 It is too soon to tell whether Lebanon’s peace will survive the April 2005 departure of those troops. Another three cases are disqualiﬁed because of both an occupying force and de facto partition. In Bosnia, 7,000 peacekeepers remained nine years after the Dayton accords, which granted signiﬁcant autonomy (including military) to each of Bosnia’s two entities.49 Likewise, two civil wars in Georgia’s secessionist republics of the early 1990s, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, were halted by occupying Russian troops and local autonomy, though without ﬁnal peace agreements to formalize these arrangements.50 Another recent case of ostensibly negotiated peace is actually a disguised victory. In late 1995, Yugoslav authorities agreed to end hostilities and give back to Croatia control of the Eastern Slavonia region captured four years earlier. They did so, however, only after Croatia forcibly took back other Serbheld regions in Croatia and Bosnia and appeared poised to do the same to Eastern Slavonia. By settling this matter through negotiation rather than war, Belgrade managed to avoid the near total Serb out-migration that occurred in regions re-taken forcibly by Croatia, and thus enabled 80 percent of Serbs to remain after the peaceful handover.51 But the result is Croatian control, not power-sharing. Bangladesh cannot be counted, even though violence has subsided, because its power-sharing agreement has not been implemented. In 1997, the government agreed to settle its two-decade war against rebels of the Chittagong hill tribes – which had left thousands dead – by granting limited autonomy and reversing a Bengali land-settlement program that had displaced additional tens of thousands of tribal people. The agreement qualiﬁes as power-sharing because the pledged autonomy is extremely limited and makes no provision for autonomous tribal security forces or a defensible internal border. But the government has failed to implement most of the agreement, especially since the 2001 election of the BNP party that had opposed it. Not only has the government refused to facilitate return of displaced tribal people, it continues to subsidize Bengali settlers. Moreover, violence erupted anew in 2003, displacing 1,500 tribal people.52 Full-blown civil war has yet to renew, but the case cannot be coded as successful resolution of ethnic war through power-sharing until calm is restored and the government substantially implements the agreement. Yet another intriguing case satisﬁes all the tests for power-sharing settlement of ethnic civil war – except the death toll was so low that the conﬂict may not qualify as war. From 1990–1995, Mali’s army fought a counter-insurgency against northern Tuareg rebels. The violence clearly had an ethnic character, as Tuareg spearheaded the rebellion and were singled out for retaliation by the government (though other northern minorities initially supported the rebels). The peace agreement did not represent a negotiated surrender because both sides realized that victory was impossible and accordingly made signiﬁcant concessions: the government sharply increased spending in the north, marginally 38

POWER-SHARING OR PARTITION?

expanded autonomy, and integrated some former rebels into the army and civil service, while the Tuareg abandoned their goal of independence, demobilized, and turned over 3,000 weapons. The grant of autonomy was not tantamount to partition because the Tuareg gave up autonomous security forces. Nor did any third-party occupation enforce peace. Initial grassroots opposition to powersharing on both sides was mitigated by widespread reconciliation efforts by the army and communal groups.53 Peace was not merely a pause in ﬁghting because it persists a decade later.54 The only question is whether the ﬁghting ever escalated sufﬁciently to qualify as war. Death estimates for the entire ﬁve-year conﬂict run only between 500 and 1,000 – below the threshold for war in most operational deﬁnitions.55 To Kaufmann’s credit, none of the eight settlements he attributes to regional autonomy actually qualiﬁes as power-sharing. But one case comes close and most of the other wars never actually ended at all. For example, the conﬂict between India and its Naga minority persists at a low level despite the enforcement efforts of 200,000 Indian troops among the 3.5 million populace of Nagaland, because many Nagas reject the 1972 agreement as a surrender.56 Likewise India’s war against its Tripuri insurgency persists after India’s perceived failure to implement a 1988 autonomy agreement.57 Until a 2006 ceaseﬁre, Spain’s battle against Basque separatists persisted at its historic, extremely low level (800 killed in thirty-ﬁve years) despite a 1980 autonomy agreement.58 Israel’s struggle against the Palestinians continues after collapse of the 1993 Oslo peace accords. Also, as noted above, autonomy agreements have failed to settle the Philippines’ struggle against the Moro, or Bangladesh’s versus the Chittagong tribes, while Georgia’s war against secessionist Abkhazia is frozen by the intervention of Russian troops. The case in Kaufmann’s database that comes closest to power-sharing is the 1987 peace agreement between Nicaragua’s government and its Miskito Indian minority. Though the state nominally granted autonomy, actual local authority has remained so limited that the Miskitos protested in 2000 by boycotting elections. Power thus remains centrally shared, yet peace has prevailed for more than seventeen years. As in Mali, however, the death toll in the original conﬂict was so low (a few hundred Miskito deaths) that it probably should not be counted as civil war.59 Finally, Papua New Guinea’s war against Bougainville rebels, which Kaufmann coded as a victory for the state in 1988, actually persisted for at least another decade. A recent autonomy agreement has halted ﬁghting, but it is too soon to know whether peace will hold.60

Lessons for Bosnia Even the six cases of “successful” power-sharing after ethnic civil war, described above, provide little optimism for long-term peace in a unitary Bosnia. Lebanon’s 1958 settlement overcame a much smaller challenge because the death toll had been only two percent of that in Bosnia, and still the settlement did not prevent war from resuming seventeen years later (albeit for different 39

ALAN J. KUPERMAN

reasons). Sudan’s 1972 agreement broke down after eleven years, leading to a second, even bloodier civil war that lasted more than two decades. Zimbabwe’s 1979 inter-racial peace agreement was quickly followed by factional war among the blacks, and the agreement itself began to unravel after twenty years, prompting an exodus of the white minority. In Mozambique peace has held, but the preceding war was not driven by the kind of ethnic fears that permeated Bosnia, so power-sharing was easier. South Africa’s death toll was less than 10 percent of that in Bosnia, diluted across a longer time and over a larger population, and the iconic Nelson Mandela promoted compromise – distinctive factors that may account for the success of power-sharing. Only Guatemala’s 1996 peace agreement represents successful centralized power-sharing after extremely violent ethnic civil war. But this single analogy, where peace has lasted for less than a decade, is a weak reed on which to hang policy towards Bosnia. Despite this dearth of historical precedent, the international community has increasingly pursued power-sharing, and opposed partition, in implementing Dayton. The accords themselves, in Annex 4, established a new constitution for Bosnia with a high-degree of regional autonomy, granting the Serb Republic control of its own armed forces, police, tax code, education system, parliament, and political institutions, with very little authority centralized at the Bosnian state level.61 Over the last ﬁve years, however, incentives from the European Union, NATO, and the United States – and unilateral acts by the Ofﬁce of the High Representative (OHR) – have coerced or imposed centralization. The Federation half of Bosnia has welcomed aspects of centralization, but until recently progress has been hampered by broad political opposition from Bosnia’s Serb Republic. The European Union, since the late 1990s, has dangled the economic carrot of accession via its “stabilization and association process,” attempting to coerce Bosnia into increasingly intrusive reforms including the strengthening of the central state at the expense of the regional autonomy codiﬁed by Dayton. Laying the groundwork in May 1999, the Council of Europe established thirteen requirements for Bosnia to join its organization. Next, in May 2000, the Peace Implementation Council (PIC) – a Dayton-mandated board of foreign ofﬁcials convened twice a year to oversee the agreement – established eighteen conditions for Bosnia to meet before the EU would even conduct a feasibility study on membership. These included establishment of state-level institutions – a treasury, an institute of standards, and a common passport – and the removal of trade barriers between the two entities. When the EU study was ﬁnally completed, in November 2003, it ruled that accession negotiations should not begin until the achievement of sixteen conditions, including further reduction of regional autonomy by strengthening the state-level judiciary and budget, creating a single economic space, and integrating the state’s energy market.62 NATO added to the pressure by requiring Bosnia to unify its military authority in order to qualify for the Partnership for Peace program, a prerequisite for membership in the alliance.63 Washington likewise attempted to foster centralization in late 40

POWER-SHARING OR PARTITION?

2004, by banning members of the Serb Republic’s separatist Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) from entering the United States.64 Only Bosnia’s Muslims and Croats support centralization, consistent with their longstanding advocacy of a unitary Bosnia that effectively could be controlled by their combined majority. Indeed, in June 2003, the Muslim and Croat members of Bosnia’s presidency embraced two changes to the Dayton constitution that were high on the international agenda: establishment of a uniﬁed military command; and elimination of the ethnic veto in parliament over legislation perceived to threaten a group’s interest. The Serb Republic explicitly rejected such centralization as “a return to the past” – a haunting reminder that this same controversy originally sparked Bosnia’s bloody war.65 Even the Croats, as the smallest of the three groups, remain ambivalent about centralization. They support it instrumentally, hoping to use the Muslims’ demographic power as leverage against the Serbs, but retain their own aspirations for separation and eventual uniﬁcation with Croatia. As a result, international coercion explains nearly all of the centralization and other institutional reform that Bosnia has adopted legislatively. The Council of Europe reported in 2001 that such change had “been a slow and difﬁcult process, accomplished only under constant pressure of the international community.” Three years later, Christophe Solioz likewise observed that, “the international community is still largely responsible for pushing forward the adoption and implementation of this reform package, notably by drafting about 60 percent of the [EU-mandated] laws – usually with only minimal participation by Bosnian ofﬁcials.”66 Coercion is facilitated by the threat that the OHR can and will impose reform unilaterally, if necessary, under the expansive Bonn powers conferred by the PIC in December 1997.67 The former HR, Paddy Ashdown, enunciated this threat in September 2003, warning the Bosnian parliament that, “The more you reform, the less I will have to. The less you reform, the more I will have to.”68 This carrot and stick approach has worked gradually, at least at the margins. In December 2003, Bosnia’s parliament approved the OHR’s proposal to centralize nominal control of the armed forces by shifting command of the Serb Republic army to the president of Bosnia. The legislature also created a federal investigative service to conduct police operations across entity lines, which previously had been hindered by the entities’ separate police forces.69 These reforms effectively amended the Dayton constitution, leading the OHR’s principal deputy, Donald Hays, to declare in 2004 that the EU’s economic incentives had ﬁnally triumphed over nationalism.70 Such optimism was bolstered when the SDS lost in local elections in October 2004, spurring one local pollster to agree that the “Serb stomach has ﬁnally won over the Serb heart.”71 On core issues of political autonomy, however, the Serb Republic has been reluctant to acquiesce, forcing the OHR to impose decisions unilaterally. For example, in November 2000, immediately following elections, “the OHR imposed ten pieces of legislation dealing with everything from the court system 41

ALAN J. KUPERMAN

to weights and measures.”72 In December 2002, Ashdown unilaterally created three state-level ministries – Justice, Security, and Transportation – to deal with domestic affairs that previously had been the purview of the entities. At the same time, he halted the practice of rotating the ofﬁces of prime minister and other cabinet ministers among the three ethnic groups, and eliminated the veto each group had held over major ministry decisions.73 Soon after, in April 2003, he abolished the Serb Republic’s supreme defense council and eliminated all reference to statehood in its constitution.74 Perhaps most dramatically, in July 2004, Ashdown barred from politics nearly sixty ofﬁcials of the Serb nationalist SDS party, including its leader Dragan Kalinic.75 The danger of this strong-arm approach is illustrated by the Serb Republic’s reaction to the OHR’s efforts to erode autonomy on security affairs.76 On 16 December 2004, Ashdown dismissed nine police and political ofﬁcials in the Serb Republic, ordering the entity to surrender control of police and defense matters to the central state. Instead, the republic’s Prime Minister Dragan Mikerevic resigned, despite being a political moderate opposed to the nationalist SDS. Indeed, Bosnian Serb politicians across the political spectrum reacted by signing a joint hard-line statement opposing any unilateral re-centralization of authority. Moreover, in January 2005, the republic’s president nominated as the new prime minister a member of the nationalist SDS party. Thus, rather than compelling uniﬁcation, the OHR’s diktat backﬁred by at least temporarily bolstering separatist tendencies. The OHR eventually prevailed by again resorting to international leverage. NATO and the EU reiterated that uniﬁcation of the Bosnian army was a prerequisite for membership, coercing the Serb Republic to acquiesce in August 2005.77 The EU also threatened in October 2005 to exclude Bosnia from imminent Balkan accession talks unless centralization were extended to the police, which compelled the Serb parliament to approve by a vote of 55–5 this major concession that it had rejected 56–10 only a month earlier.78 The European Commission rewarded Bosnia two weeks later by recommending the start of accession talks.79 But the autonomy question will persist during the ﬁve-year implementation of the policing statute, which is based on three somewhat vague principles: centralization of administrative control, elimination of political interference, and establishment of new jurisdictions based on policing requirements rather than entity borders.80 Bosnia’s Serbs still cling to their fundamental demand to govern and police themselves, so they are likely to resist any police jurisdictions that substantially cross the inter-entity border. Indeed, the presence of armed Federation ofﬁcials in the Serb Republic could provoke tension and even violence. Savo Cvjetinovic, head of the Bosnian Serb war veterans’ association, ominously warned recently that, “Republika Srpska was born in blood and will end in blood if necessary.”81 The danger of such destabilization is underscored by an International Crisis Group report warning that, “signiﬁcant quantities of light and heavy weapons remain dispersed at storage locations throughout the country, some of which have not been registered with SFOR as required under Dayton.”82 42

POWER-SHARING OR PARTITION?

This is not to suggest that international efforts to coerce Bosnia’s centralization threaten to reignite war imminently, especially given the continuing presence of international peacekeepers (although NATO’s peacekeeping role was replaced in 2004 by the EU, which is now contemplating phasing out the military presence).83 Nor is this analysis intended to downplay the risks that a partition of Bosnia would create for the surrounding areas of the former Yugoslavia. As has been true since the start of the Yugoslav crisis in 1990, any secession, even a relatively peaceful one, risks spurring a domino effect that could trigger violence. At minimum, a partition of Bosnia would increase demands for independence by Kosovo, and for greater autonomy by Albanians in Macedonia and Serbia’s Presevo Valley, as well as by Bosniaks in the Sandzak and Hungarians in Vojvodina. This contagion threat from partition may outweigh the domestic risks of centralization. But if coerced centralization triggered civil war in Bosnia, it likewise would threaten contagious violence. Thus, the risks of partition do not by themselves justify the international community pushing blithely in the opposite direction toward rapid re-centralization of authority in Bosnia, as it continues to do. Just days after the coerced centralization of Bosnia’s police and army in October 2005, U.S. undersecretary of state Nicholas Burns called for further erosion of autonomy by “strengthening of a single Presidency” and “building a unitary state.”84 The historical record does not rule out the possibility of centralized power-sharing after ethnic civil war, but it does indicate that such an attempt is a longshot more likely to result in renewed violence. In the absence of any ﬁrm grounds for expecting better prospects in this case, the international community – as represented by the OHR, the EU, NATO and the United States – should proceed with far greater caution in Bosnia than they have recently.

A path forward At least ﬁve options can be envisioned for consolidating peace in Bosnia. First, the international community could continue on its present course of coercing centralized power-sharing while downsizing its peacekeeping presence. Such an approach might work, despite the dearth of historical precedent, due to unique factors in Bosnia such as the unprecedented level of engagement by international civic agencies, the extraordinary enticement of EU membership, and the increasing preference of co-ethnics in neighboring states for regional peace.85 But some recent evidence suggests this strategy may be backﬁring by intensifying nationalism that could, in a worst-case scenario, spur the renewal of war. A second alternative is for the international community to reverse course and embrace the formal partition of Bosnia into two states. However, this could trigger dominoes in Bosnia and the wider Balkans, spurring demands for secession, independence and irredentism. A third option, in recognition of these continuing regional tensions, would be an international conference to adjust borders or develop a common framework for grants of local autonomy within 43

ALAN J. KUPERMAN

the former Yugoslavia.86 For example, Serbia would be more willing to accept the independence of Kosovo if it were compensated by being allowed to annex Bosnia’s Serb Republic. But the long-term failure of previous such efforts, in 1878 and 1919, suggests caution in opening Pandora’s box – even if somehow the requisite political will again could be conjured, which is difﬁcult to imagine. The fourth possibility is known colloquially as “kicking the can down the road” – maintaining Bosnia’s status quo by deferring any further centralization. Bosnia would remain a de facto international protectorate with a sizeable peacekeeping force and would retain its ambiguous Dayton status between partition and integration, which is peaceful if inefﬁcient, in the hope that a more permanent solution eventually would arise. As noted at the outset, however, two main problems confront this option. First, in the absence of war, international will for the enormous cost of sustaining this limbo status is rapidly eroding. Second, the patience of the Bosnians themselves may soon reach its limit, especially if the ﬁnal status of Kosovo is resolved before theirs. All of this suggests that a ﬁfth option is the best way to consolidate peace in Bosnia. Not coincidentally, it is the same one that might have averted war in the ﬁrst place. Rather than rejecting the Serb Republic’s demand for strong regional autonomy, the international community should embrace it, halt the pressure on Bosnians to strengthen their central state, and accept the de facto, though not de jure, partition of Bosnia into a very loose confederation of two entities. By alleviating the longstanding Serb fear of being subjected to Muslim-Croat rule, it would remove the last potential casus belli of any signiﬁcance in Bosnia. The Muslims might feel aggrieved by losing the prospect of a unitary Bosnia, but it is inconceivable that they would take up arms to regain it. The Croats might cite the Serb precedent to demand greater autonomy in the Federation cantons where they predominate, but they too would be unlikely to resort to violence. Risks of a regional domino effect could be mitigated by opposing the de jure partition of Bosnia, thus preventing the emergence of a fully independent Serb Republic. The example of Bosnia as an extremely loose confederation could also serve as a model for resolving Kosovo’s ﬁnal status by granting that province co-equal status in a two-entity state with Serbia. If this model could keep the region peaceful long enough to enable EU accession for all of the former Yugoslavia, it might well avert any return to war. The greatest opposition to this proposal would probably come from two external actors. First, the United States has long opposed granting full autonomy to the Serb Republic on grounds that it would reward prior ethnic cleansing. The U.S. desire not to reward aggression or set a negative precedent is admirable, but given that the Serbs acquired no net territory in the ﬁghting, were themselves uprooted in many areas, suffered considerable hardship, and would not gain full independence, it is unlikely that other groups in the region would view the Serbs’ fate as worthy of emulation. Second, the European Union argues that centralizing Bosnia is essential to carrying out the reforms required for accession. In truth, however, this is a matter of convenience rather than necessity. The EU’s 44

POWER-SHARING OR PARTITION?

bureaucrats, heavily burdened by the union’s recent and ongoing eastward expansion, understandably would prefer to deal with Bosnia as one rather than two entities. But it is implausible that EU ofﬁcials would be unable to prepare Bosnia for accession simply because they were forced to work separately with Sarajevo and Banja Luka. The normative preferences of the United States and the bureaucratic concerns of the European Union are worthy considerations, but they pale in comparison to the goal of consolidating an, as yet, still fragile peace in Bosnia.

Notes 1 An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the tenth annual World Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities, Columbia University, New York, NY, 14–16 April 2005. The middle section of this chapter also draws on my article, Copyright 2004 from Alan J. Kuperman, “Is Partition Really the Only Hope? Reconciling Contradictory Findings About Ethnic Civil Wars,” Security Studies, Vol. 13, No. 4 (summer 2004), pp. 314–349, part of a special issue on “Living Together After Ethnic Killing.” 2 A. J. Kuperman, “The Moral Hazard of Humanitarian Intervention: Lessons From the Balkans,” unpublished manuscript. 3 D. Binder, “U.S. Policymakers on Bosnia Admit Errors in Opposing Partition in 1992,” New York Times, 29 August 1993, p. 10. Although all three groups agreed to the principles, they did not sign them. S. L. Burg and P. S. Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1999, pp. 110, 112. 4 C. Kaufmann, “Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars,” International Security 20, no. 4 (spring 1996), pp. 136–175. He suggests that a minimal level of residual ethnic intermingling, following population exchanges, will not necessarily trigger renewal of war, although he does not deﬁne this threshold. 5 See T. R. Gurr, Minorities at Risk: A Global View of Ethnopolitical Conﬂicts, Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace, 1993; and T. R. Gurr, “Peoples Against States: Ethnopolitical Conﬂict and the Changing World System,” International Studies Quarterly 38, no. 3 (September 1994), pp. 347–377. 6 Kaufmann, “Possible and Impossible,” p. 161. 7 T. D. Mason and P. J. Fett, “How Civil Wars End: A Rational Choice Approach,” Journal of Conﬂict Resolution 40, no. 4 (December 1996), p. 563. 8 A. J. Kuperman, “Is Partition Really the Only Hope? Reconciling Contradictory Findings About Ethnic Civil Wars,” Security Studies, Vol. 13, No. 4 (summer 2004), pp. 314–349. 9 Starting in 1980, negotiated settlement of all civil war became far more commonplace than before. Whereas Licklider found less than a quarter of the civil wars that ended from 1945–1993 did so by negotiated agreement, Hoddie and Hartzell say the ﬁgure is 65 percent (twenty-four of thirty-seven) for wars that ended from 1980 to 1996. See M. Hoddie and C. Hartzell, “Civil War Settlements and the Implementation of Military Power-Sharing Arrangements,” Journal of Peace Research, 40, no. 3 (May 2003), pp. 303–320. The authors do not disaggregate power-sharing and power-dividing agreements. Howard notes a similar trend in all major civil-war databases, which she attributes to a temporary norm of negotiated settlement in the late twentieth century. See L. M. Howard, “The Rise and Decline of the Norm of Negotiated Settlement,” paper presented at the Georgetown Junior Faculty Workshop on Intervention, Georgetown University, 23–24 October 2003, 2. She cites the Major Armed Conﬂict, Correlates of War, and Intra State War databases, and those 45

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10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

compiled by Walter, Doyle and Sambanis, and SIPRI. She believes the norm has faded in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. D. Rothchild and C. A. Hartzell, “Security in Deeply Divided Societies: The Role of Territorial Autonomy,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 5, no. 3&4 (autumn–winter 1999), pp. 267–268. C. A. Hartzell and M. Hoddie, “Institutionalizing Peace: Power Sharing and PostCivil War Conﬂict Management,” American Journal of Political Science, 47 (2003), p. 328. C. Hartzell, M. Hoddie, and D. Rothchild, “Stabilizing the Peace After Civil War: An Investigation of Some Key Variables,” International Organization 55, no. 1 (winter 2001), pp. 183–208. D. A. Lake and D. Rothchild, “Territorial Decentralization and Civil War Settlements,” in Sustainable Peace: Power and Democracy after Civil Wars, eds P. G. Roeder and D. Rothchild (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), p. 110. The authors, however, do ﬁnd nine states that remain “semi-decentralized” following implementation of a negotiated agreement. The authors cite two factors that militate toward partition: (1) governance requires a belief that institutions will last, and fully independent institutions are perceived as longer lasting; and (2) minorities do not accept promises about future benign treatment. They cite one opposing factor: any central institutions inherently promote further centralization. This empirical ﬁnding and theoretical argument are in tension with the deductive logic in favor of regional autonomy in Hartzell, Hoddie, and Rothchild, “Stabilizing the Peace,” 191–192. Lake and Rothchild, “Territorial Decentralization,” argue that the state’s promise of regional autonomy, even if not credible, represents a “costly signal” that reassures opposing groups in the short term. O. Barak, “Intra-Communal and Inter-Communal Dimensions of Conﬂict and Peace in Lebanon,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 34, no. 4 (November 2002), pp. 619–644. P. M. Atlas and R. Licklider, “Conﬂict Among Former Allies After Civil War Settlement: Sudan, Zimbabwe, Chad, and Lebanon,” Journal of Peace Research, 36, no. 1 (January 1999), p. 36. B. F. Walter, Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. T. C. Schelling, Arms and Inﬂuence, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966. Atlas and Licklider, “Conﬂict Among Former Allies,” 40. Atlas and Licklider, “Conﬂict Among Former Allies.” E. Alin, “U.S. Policy and Military Intervention in the 1958 Lebanon Crisis,” in D. W. Lesch, The Middle East and the United States: A Historical and Political Reassessment, 3rd edition, Boulder: Westview, 2003, pp. 149–167. B. M. Seaver, “The Regional Sources of Power-Sharing Failure: The Case of Lebanon,” Political Science Quarterly, 115, no. 2 (summer 2000), pp. 254–255. M. Hudson, “Trying Again: Power-Sharing in Post-Civil War Lebanon,” International Negotiation 2, no. 1 (January 1997), p. 108. H. Cobban, The Making of Modern Lebanon, London: Hutchinson, 1985, pp. 88, 91. L. M. T. Meo, Lebanon: Improbable Nation, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965, p. 169. K. S. Salibi, The Modern History of Lebanon, New York: Praeger, 1965, p. 201. C. Attié, Struggle in the Levant: Lebanon in the 1950s, London: I. B. Tauris, 2004, pp. 171, 228. Seaver, “The Regional Sources of Power-Sharing Failure,” p. 266. Mason and Fett, “How Civil Wars End”; Kaufmann, “Possible and Impossible.” Atlas and Licklider, “Conﬂict Among Former Allies,” p. 38, summarize: “the settle-

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31

32 33 34 35 36

37

38 39 40

41 42

ment seems to collapse as an unanticipated consequence of internal political tensions within the northern elite.” Each side was told by its historical sponsor (the United Kingdom for the whites; neighboring frontline states for the blacks) that support would be cut off if they did not negotiate in good faith, but would be sustained if the other side rejected a negotiated settlement. The United Kingdom also committed, in response to rebel demands, to deploy more than 1,000 British-led Commonwealth monitors during the transition and to permit the rebel forces to be cantoned near supportive frontline states where they felt less vulnerable in case the white government reneged. See Stephen John Stedman, Peacemaking in Civil War: International Mediation in Zimbabwe, 1974–1980, Lynne Rienner, 1991. See also Walter, Committing to Peace, 131–142, who emphasizes the monitors, although the location of cantonment areas seems to have been more decisive. The death total is from Mason and Fett, “How Civil Wars End.” Atlas and Licklider, “Conﬂict Among Former Allies,” pp. 40–43. All of the monitors withdrew by 16 March 1980, leaving behind only forty British ofﬁcers to help train the Zimbabwean army, http://www.britains-smallwars. com/RRGP/Agila/Sunset.jtm (accessed 6 March 2004). Atlas and Licklider, “Conﬂict Among Former Allies,” p. 40. R. W. Johnson, “Mugabe, Mbeki, and Mandela’s Shadow,” The National Interest, no. 63 (spring 2001), pp. 59–75. M. Cahen, “Nationalism and Ethnicities: Lessons from Mozambique,” dated 1999, available at http://www.cphrc.org.uk/essays/cahen1.htm (accessed 6 March 2004). See also, M. Cahen, “Nationalisms and Ethnicities: Lessons from Mozambique,” in E. Braathen, M. Bøås and G. Sæther (eds), Ethnicity Kills? The Politics of War, Peace and Ethnicity in Sub-Saharan Africa, London: Macmillan, 2000, pp. 163–187. P. Gastrow, “A Joint Effort – The South African Peace Process,” European Platform for Conﬂict Prevention and Transformation, available at http://www.xs4all.nl/ ~conﬂic1/pbp/part1/8_joint_.htm (accessed 12 March 2004). A chart of yearly political violence is contained in P. Camay and A. J. Gordon, “The National Peace Accord and its Structures,” South Africa Civil Society and Governance Case Study no. 1, Co-operative for Research and Education (CORE), Johannesburg, South Africa, 2000, available at http://www.ids.ac.uk/ids/civsoc/ﬁnal/southafrica/saf4.doc (accessed 12 March 2004). “Democracy and Deep-Rooted Conﬂict Case Study: South Africa,” Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, available at http://www.idea.int/publications/democracy_and_deep_rooted_conﬂict/ebook_cs_ south_africa.htm (accessed 12 March 2004). “The Zulu of South Africa,” Minorities at Risk, available at http://www.cidcm. umd.edu/inscr/mar/data/safzulu.htm (accessed 12 March 2004). Lake and Rothchild, “Territorial Decentralization.” “Good news for political stability – but South Africans are still insecure,” South African Institute of Race Relations, 21 March 2001, available at http://www.sairr. org.za/wsc/pstory.htx?storyID=214 (accessed 12 March 2004). Report concludes that “Since 1994 political violence has declined consistently.” S. Jonas, “Democratization Through Peace: The Difﬁcult Case of Guatemala,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 42, no. 4 (winter 2001), pp. 10–14. H. Salvesen, “Guatemala: Five Years After the Peace Accords. The Challenges of Implementing Peace,” International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO), March 2002, pp. 9–17. MINUGUA Report to the Consultative Group Meeting for Guatemala, Executive Summary, UN Veriﬁcation Mission in Guatemala, 7 May 2003, 1–2.

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43 “Poll Rivals Pledge Boost for Mayans,” Agence France Press, 27 December 2003. 44 “Menchu Plans to Join New Guatemalan Government,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 18 January 2004, 8A. 45 After more than two decades of war that killed 50,000, the agreement of 2 September 1996 created an autonomous region comprising fourteen provinces. The region was slightly enlarged by an August 2000 referendum. “Moros in the Philippines,” Minorities at Risk, www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/mar/data/phimoro.htm (accessed 12 April 2004). See also Rothchild and Hartzell, “Security in Deeply Divided Societies,” p. 260. 46 12,000 troops are committed to the mission, although only about 4,000 are deployed at any time, while the rest are in various stages of rotation. P. Almond, “Ulster Vote Hit UK Troop Options,” UPI, 28 November 2003. These troop levels are planned to be reduced in the wake of the Irish Republican Army’s announcement of plans to disarm. “Britain Plans Major Cuts of Troops in N. Ireland,” Washington Post, 2 August 2005, p. A14, reports that, “Britain would cut troop levels by more than half to a maximum of 5,000 at 14 bases within two years.” 47 G. Gleason, “Power Sharing in Tajikistan: Political Compromise and Regional Instability,” Conﬂict, Security and Development, 1, no. 3 (December 2001), p. 127. 48 S. Wilson, “Last Syrian Soldiers Depart Lebanon,” Washington Post, 27 April 2005, p. A18. N. Blanford, “Syria loosens its grip on Lebanon. Despite the latest troop withdrawal last week, about 15,000 Syrians remain,” Christian Science Monitor, 31 July 2003. Kaufmann includes Lebanon-1989 in his database as a case of outside military occupation. 49 International Crisis Group, “EUFOR: Changing Bosnia’s Security Arrangements,” 29 June 2004, 3. See also http://www.nato.int/sfor/organisation/sfororg.htm (accessed 11 March 2004); S. Bose, Bosnia after Dayton: Nationalist Partition and International Intervention, London: Hurst and Company, 2002. 50 C. King, “The Beneﬁts of Ethnic War: Understanding Eurasia’s Unrecognized States,” World Politics, Vol. 53, No. 4 (July 2001), pp. 524–552. Kaufmann includes Abkhazia-1993 in his database as a case of settlement by regional autonomy. 51 “Eastern Slavonia back to Croatia’s control: Country returns to its pre-war borders,” CNN, 15 January 1998, http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/9801/15/croatia.handover/ (accessed 12 March 2004). 52 “Bangladesh: land disputes perpetuate internal displacement,” Global IDP, Norwegian Refugee Council, available at http://www.db.idpproject.org/Sites/IdpprojectDb/ idpSurvey.nsf/SearchResults/F8F0406D73E163ADC1256BA2004F010C?OpenDocument (accessed 12 March 2004). “The Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord: Squandering the Peace and Human Rights Dividends,” Asian Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Network, New Delhi, India, January 2003, available at http://www.aitpn.org/ Brieﬁngpapers/II-03-03-CHTs.PDF (accessed 12 March 2004). 53 K. Lode, “Mali’s Peace Process: Context, Analysis and Evaluation,” ACCORD – Conciliation Resources, http://www.c-r.org/accord/peace/accord13/mapea.shtml (accessed 12 April 2004). B. Posthumus, “Mali: Successful Mediation Effort Could Lead to Lasting Peace,” dated 2000, http://www.conﬂict-prevention.net/dev/ ECCP/ECCPSurveys_v0_10.nsf/0/CB6AEB8CD65E670FC1256B2700317DED?ope ndocument (accessed 12 April 2004). Lt. Col. K. Keita, Conﬂict and Conﬂict Resolution in the Sahel: The Tuareg Insurgency in Mali, Carlisle, Penn.: Strategic Studies Institute, 1998, http://www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/pubs/1998/tuareg/tuareg.htm (accessed 12 April 2004). 54 “Tuareg of Mali,” Minorities at Risk, http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/mar/data/malituar.htm (accessed 12 April 2004). “Background Note: Mali,” Bureau of African Affairs, U.S. Department of State, November 2003, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/ 2828.htm (accessed 12 April 2004). Recent unrest has led the government to make

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55

56 57

58

59

60

61 62

63 64 65 66

further concessions. See, “Mali: Government strikes new peace deal with Tuareg rebels,” United Nations Integrated Regional Information Networks, 5 July 2006. R. W. Ayres, “A World Flying Apart? Violent Nationalist Conﬂict and the End of the Cold War,” Journal of Peace Research 37, no. 1 (January 2000), p. 12, http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~dgalvan/ps607-w04/ayres-post911.pdf (accessed 12 April 2004). M. G. Marshall, Measuring the Societal Impact of War (2002), Appendix A, www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/papers/IPAmgmA.pdf (accessed 12 April 2004). “Nagas in India,” http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/mar/data/indnaga.htm (accessed 29 March 2004). R. Radhakrishnan, “Terror strikes in Tripura,” Institute of Peace and Conﬂict Studies, New Delhi, 26 September 2002, http://www.ipcs.org/ipcs/issueIndex2.jsp?action =showView&kValue=84&issue=1014&status=article&mod=b, (accessed 29 March 2004); Paolienlal Haokip, “Election Verdicts in Nagaland, Meghalaya and Tripura: Mandates for Peace?” Institute of Peace and Conﬂict Studies, New Delhi, 21 March 2003, http://www.ipcs.org/ipcs/issueIndex2.jsp?action=showView&kValue=956& issue=1014&status=article&mod=b (accessed 29 March 2004). “Tripuras/Tripuriin India,” Minorities at Risk, http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/mar/data/indtrip.htm (accessed 29 March 2004). http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/basque/stories/overview.html (accessed 29 March 2004). “Basques in Spain,” Minorities at Risk, http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/ inscr/mar/data/spbasque.htm (accessed 29 March 2004). G. Pingree and L. Abend, “Spain: ETA on a new track,” Christian Science Monitor, 10 May 2006, p. 6. A. Guillermoprieto, “OAS Study Says Miskito Indians Suffered Abuse From Sandinistas,” Washington Post, 8 June 1984, A18. G. Gedda, “Defector Charges Sandinistas Executed Thousands,” Associated Press, 18 September 1985. “North Atlantic Coast Miskito Indians,” Carnegie Project on Complex Power-Sharing and Self-Determination, http://www.ecmi.de/cps/about_miskito.html (accessed 29 March 2004). “Native Peoples of Nicaragua,” Minorities at Risk, http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/mar/ data/indnic.htm (accessed 29 March 2004). “Bougainville should have an autonomous government in place by 30 June [2005],” according to recent government claims. “Papua New Guinea minister upbeat on progress to Bougainville autonomy,” The National (Papua New Guinea), BBC Monitoring Asia Paciﬁc, 15 March 2005. “Bougainvilleans in Papua New Guinea,” Minorities at Risk, http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/mar/data/pngboug.htm (accessed 29 March 2004). “Bougainville Case Review,” Carnegie Project on Complex PowerSharing and Self-Determination, http://www.ecmi.de/cps/documents_bougain ville_case.html (accessed 29 March 2004). T. K. Vogel, “The State of State-Building in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” unpublished manuscript, 2 November 2003. C. Solioz, “Bosnia and Herzegovina Beyond Dayton: From Intervention Towards Integration,” Forum for Democratic Alternatives, Working Paper, No. 2, September 2004, pp. 8, 11–12. Differing regulations are one reason the Serb Republic trades mainly with the former Yugoslavia, and the Federation with Croatia, rather than with each other. See “EU Focus: Unifying Bosnia’s Markets,” Balkan Crisis Report, No. 515, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, 10 September 2004. S. Numanovic, “Bosnia: Dayton Reform Urged,” Balkan Crisis Report, No. 439, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, 20 June 2003. G. Katana, “New Bosnian Serb Government Underwhelms,” Balkan Crisis Report, No. 536, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, 14 January 2005. The quote is from the ofﬁce of Borislav Paravac, a member of the Serb Republic’s presidency. Numanovic, “Bosnia: Dayton Reform Urged.” Solioz, “Bosnia and Herzegovina Beyond Dayton,” pp. 8, 14.

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67 Vogel, “The State of State-Building in Bosnia and Herzegovina.” 68 Speech by the High Representative Paddy Ashdown to the BiH Parliamentary Assembly, 10 September 2003, http://www.ohr.int/print/?content_id=30748 (accessed 7 May 2005). 69 “EUFOR: Changing Bosnia’s Security Arrangements,” 2–3, 8. A state-level intelligence agency was established in June 2004. 70 “EU Focus: Unifying Bosnia’s Markets.” 71 G. Katana, “Bosnian Serbs Punish SDS at the Polls,” Balkan Crisis Report, No. 520, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, 8 October 2004. 72 G. Knaus and F. Martin, “Travails of the European Raj,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 14, No. 3 (July 2003), p. 67. 73 D. Valenta, “Bosnia: A New Sort of Government,” Balkan Crisis Report, No. 399, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, 21 January 2003. To pay for this enlarged state government, Ashdown proposed diverting customs duties from the entities and creating a VAT. 74 “Bosnia: Ashdown Reins in Bosnian Serbs,” Balkan Crisis Report, No. 420, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, 20 April 2003. 75 Katana, “Bosnian Serbs Punish SDS at the Polls.” 76 Katana, “New Bosnian Serb Government Underwhelms.” 77 G. Katana, “Bosnian Serbs Surrender Their Own Army,” Balkan Crisis Report, No. 574, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, 9 September 2005. 78 I. Traynor, “Europe: Serbs bow to pressure for single Bosnian police force,” Guardian, 7 October 2005, p. 19. Gordana Katana, “Bosnia: EU Hopes Hit by Serb Police Reform Rejection,” Balkan Crisis Report, No. 576, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, 23 September 2005. “Bosnian Serb parliament adopts EU-required police reform,” Agence France Presse, 5 October 2005. 79 “World in Brief,” Washington Post, 22 October 2005, p. A16. 80 “Bosnian Serb Parliament adopts police reform,” Deutsche Press-Agentur, 5 October 2005. “OHR Says parliamentarians’ approval will open road to Europe,” ONASA News Agency, 11 October 2005. 81 Katana, “Bosnia: EU Hopes.” 82 “EUFOR: Changing Bosnia’s Security Arrangements,” p. 7. 83 “EU approves talks with Bosnia,” Agence France Presse, 19 October 2005. 84 “State’s Burns Urges Action on Bosnian War Crimes Indictees; Under secretary also urges further constitutional reforms in Bosnia,” U.S. State Department, 12 October 2005, http://usinfo.state.gov/dhr/Archive/2005/Oct/17-519521.html (accessed 15 November 2005). 85 I thank Florian Bieber for highlighting this perspective. 86 Such an option, considered outlandish by some, has been proposed by respected ﬁgures including the former editor of Foreign Affairs. See, W. G. Hyland, “On to a Big Table,” Washington Post, 31 March 1999, p. A29.

50

3 DEMOCRATIC ENDS, (UN)DEMOCRATIC MEANS? Reﬂections on democratization strategies in Brcˇko and in Bosnia-Herzegovina Valery Perry

The international effort to stabilize and democratize post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has been unique in many ways, including the length, scope and reach of the peace implementation process. Not since the post-World War II occupation and reconstruction efforts in Germany and Japan has there been such a sustained effort by outside actors to bring about change in a post-war state. In addition to being interesting from an academic and historical point of view, post-Dayton BiH is also a fascinating case-study for practice-oriented students of contemporary conﬂict management and international policy, as two different democratization strategies were implemented within the same country, in the same period of time. This chapter will reﬂect on these different approaches of the international intervention and democratization effort in post-war BiH – the promotion of participatory reform processes generated through democratic elections in BiH as a whole, and the establishment of a transitional authority in Brcˇko. Greater attention will be given to the speciﬁc characteristics of the Brcˇko experience, positing this case in contrast to the reform processes underway in BiH generally. The objective of this research is to better understand both the means and the results of these two democratization processes in the development of the post-war state, to identify strengths and weaknesses and to reﬂect on whether it is yet possible to conclude which strategy has offered a stronger foundation for long-term democratic governance in BiH. From the outset it must be acknowledged that BiH and Brcˇko are two very different cases and units of analysis. BiH as a whole has a population of approximately 3.7 million people, and occupies a space of 51,129 square kilometers. Brcˇko District has approximately 90,000 residents, and occupies an area of approximately 439 square kilometers. All reform challenges are magniﬁed at the state-level. Brcˇko District has not had to concern itself with issues of the state, such as international relations, defense or state-level constitutional law. The 51

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administration of basic governance is generally simpler in small communities than in larger ones. However, despite these differences, the two cases can provide useful opportunities for comparison and contrast. Both cases have multi-ethnic histories and populations. They experienced similar trauma of war from 1992 through 1995, and have faced many similar rebuilding tasks. Perhaps most importantly, the citizens and politicians in each case emerged from the same political system, had the same general educational and professional experiences, and were coming from the same starting point in December 1995. Yet crucially for this study, they were subject to different democratization strategies in roughly the same time period. For these reasons, BiH offers a constructive opportunity to understand the methods and impact of two different post-conﬂict approaches in one country. This review is a part of a larger research effort exploring the international community’s efforts to stabilize and democratize post-war BiH.1 The framework for this study is inspired by theories of democratization, conflict resolution and state-building, with an idealism tempered by understanding of the continued dominance of realpolitik. The literature underlying the research includes literature on democracy and democratic transitions,2 post-conflict elections and peacebuilding,3 and international intervention efforts.4 Some of the ideas presented can also be viewed as a partial response to some works focused specifically on BiH, which tend to be highly critical of post-war international approaches without considering the political circumstances driving such policy decisions or acknowledging some of the successes that have been achieved in the past decade.5 However, it is also meant to be broadly relevant to practitioners in the fields of post-conflict peacebuilding, democratic transitions and international support to failing or failed states. The review of system reforms is complemented by a consideration of the opinion of BiH’s citizens on the outcomes of reform, as reflected in various public opinion polls.6 Such information can act as a general barometer of public sentiment in post-conflict or transition areas, and can provide useful generalizations from populations at large. Many related and difﬁcult questions will arise throughout this study, with one in particular challenging scholars and practitioners alike. Ideally, the emergence of democracy will stem from the desires of a citizenry for an open and participatory form of government, with systems in place to ensure human rights protections.7 However, in some situations, this noble goal can be stalled or even stymied by spoilers and ethnic entrepreneurs who have more to gain from division and continued conﬂict than from peace. In divided or post-war societies, can constitutional democracies be best nurtured and developed through purely democratic and participatory means? Or are non-democratic tactics – in themselves inconsistent with the tenets of liberal democracy – at times warranted and necessary to prepare the needed ground and pre-conditions for the long-term reform processes inherent in democratization? 52

D E M O C R A T I Z A T I O N I N B R Cˇ K O A N D B O S N I A

This chapter is organized in the following manner. First, a discussion of the war-time and immediate post-war experiences of Brcˇko will provide general context and background. Second, several structures and systems essential to state-building and democratization processes, and the differing election experiences of these two cases, are reviewed. Next, the possible impact of these approaches on the “hearts and minds” of the citizens in BiH and Brcˇko will be explored through a review of selected public opinion polling data. The conclusion offers reﬂections on the contribution of these two cases to the ﬁelds of democratization and state-building.

Background The city of Brcˇko and its environs occupy 439 square kilometers of territory in the northeast corner of BiH. Strategically located at the meeting point of BiH, Croatia, and Serbia, the region was viewed as an important prize from the earliest days of the wars of Yugoslav dissolution. Prior to the war, the majority of the population in the town itself was comprised of Bosniaks (56 percent), though Serbs (20 percent), Croats (7 percent), and others (17.5 percent) made up a substantial part of the area’s demographic make-up. As was typical of much of the country before the war, the urban area tended to be more diverse than the surrounding rural areas.8 The heated political rhetoric that heralded the conﬂict was followed by violent criminal, military, and paramilitary acts beginning in late 1991 and 1992. In the weeks and months before and after a referendum and subsequent declaration of independence of BiH in March 1992, Bosnian Serb forces and supporters from Serbia proper, often with the explicit or implicit support of Belgrade and the inherited military resources of the former Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA), began operations aimed at carving out a territory that could remain a part of Yugoslavia.9 Towns along the eastern border of Bosnia with Serbia, such as Bijlejina, Zvornik and Brcˇko, became synonymous with the term ethnic cleansing, as non-Serb populations were summarily rounded up and expelled or killed, and houses and places of worship were destroyed, in order to deter any possible hopes for return. A war that was instigated by external aggression soon plunged the country into turmoil, and ignited a civil war. The Brcˇko area was a relatively prosperous region, with fertile farmland, highway transportation to Zagreb and Belgrade, and water access to the Sava River and the Danube River network. Brcˇko was also at the meeting point of the eastern and western parts of the territories that had been taken by Serb forces to form a “Serb Republic” that would either be united with Serbia proper or exist as an independent state. It was therefore a strategic site in terms of economic as well as military signiﬁcance, and throughout the war held by Serbs as a part of the Posavina corridor that connected their acquired territory. Due to its strategic and unfortunate location, Brcˇko was the scene of much violence. Civilians were forced to leave their homes, and many were held in concentration camps or 53

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killed. As non-Serbs ﬂed or were forced out, Serbs from other parts of the country (including many Serbs who left Sarajevo after the peace agreement) and Croatia often resettled in Brcˇko. These demographic upheavals had a signiﬁcant effect on the region; by the end of the war, the formerly diverse population was 99 percent Serb.10 Just as it had factored heavily in the peace talks in 1993 and 1994,11 Brcˇko remained a highly contentious issue in the peace talks at Dayton. Brcˇko had strategic, territorial and symbolic signiﬁcance for the three main negotiating parties. All parties had economic interests: the industry of the Muslim-majority Tuzla region needed access to the Sava River port in Brcˇko, Bosnian Croats wanted to ensure close ties with Croatia, and Bosnia’s Serbs desired an economic hub central to trade and transport with both Zagreb and Belgrade. Symbolic interests, however, ran even deeper. While the Federation viewed Brcˇko as a symbol of the illegitimate gains of ethnic cleansing that could not be tolerated, leaders in the Republika Srpska (RS) viewed Brcˇko as the strategic connective tissue needed to establish their own contiguous and sovereign territory. The inability to ﬁnd a mutually acceptable solution to the ownership of Brcˇko – less than 1 percent of the country’s territory – almost led to the breakdown of the talks. At the eleventh hour, a compromise was worked out that put the decision on the status of Brcˇko “on hold,” to be resolved in a year’s time by an arbitration tribunal.12

Post-war BiH and post-war Brcˇko A large international community comprised of soldiers, diplomats and aid workers ﬂooded BiH after the signing of the DPA to support the peacekeeping and reconstruction process. In 1996, elections were the cornerstone of initial post-war efforts, as mandated in Annex 3 of the peace agreement. They were considered necessary for several reasons, including their role as a means by which a post-war government could be established and ownership of the country by its people could begin. However, the primary reason that elections were mandated within six to nine months of the signing of the DPA had more to do with politics external to BiH than needs within the country. The international intervention effort was predicated upon the (now clearly ill-conceived) notion that elections would lead to an environment in which a quick international exit strategy would be possible. Instead, early elections served to solidify political animosities, further entrench the warring parties in power and create an environment in which reform and liberalization of the post-war state would be nearly impossible. As it became clear that neither the political nor social situation of the country were improving, the international community that had initially envisioned a lesser role for itself began to augment its own powers in an attempt to force change in spite of recalcitrant elected ofﬁcials, so that BiH increasingly resembled a protectorate in practice if not in name.13 Brcˇko experienced a different trajectory. The ﬁrst High Representative, Carl 54

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Bildt, described Brcˇko immediately after the war as a place that seemed as if “the world has come to an end.”14 Almost 40 percent of Brcˇko’s housing was destroyed in the war and landmines littered the territory. The systems of governance were similarly destroyed and characterized by division. The region had three separate governments, one for each ethnic group: Brcˇko town (Bosnian Serb), Brcˇko municipality (Bosniak) and Ravnne Brcˇko (Bosnian Croat), each with its own range of services, government functions and municipal staff. While the terms of Dayton mandated that the status of Brcˇko be resolved within one year, the slow pace of reconstruction and reform delayed the process. Eventually, however, a series of three decisions did resolve the temporary nature of Brcˇko’s extraordinary Dayton status.15 Rome Award The “Rome Award” of 14 February 1997, also referred to as the Interim Award, established an international supervisory body in Brcˇko for the period of one year. Fulﬁlment of the terms of Dayton in BiH generally, and in the RS in particular, was deemed to be too slow to allow for a ﬁnal decision, and the Interim Award provided a means to buy time while the post-war environment settled. The most notable point of the Interim Award was the mandated establishment of an ofﬁce and staff under the leadership of a Deputy High Representative for Brcˇko, also known as the Brcˇko Supervisor, who would oversee both Dayton implementation activities and the strengthening of local democratic institutions. In a sneak-preview of the increasingly robust powers to be given to the BiH High Representative, the Supervisor (then U.S. Ambassador Robert Farrand) was given the authority to “promulgate binding regulations and orders” in his/her duties, with such orders “prevail[ing] as against any conﬂicting law.” The Award also noted the possibility that the Brcˇko might become a “special district” of BiH, suggesting early on the possibility for a compromise.16 1998 Supplemental Award The Supplemental Award issued on 15 March 1998 represented the next phase in a gradually unfolding arbitration process. The text of the Supplemental Award was lengthy and detailed, and included a commendation for the Supervisor’s work, a review and critique of the parties’ compliance with Dayton since the Interim Award, and a nod to recent changes in RS politics.17 The text conﬁrmed the need for continuing international supervision, and considered the pros and cons of a delay of the ﬁnal decision, concluding that in light of changes in the RS political scene, the time was not yet ripe for “a long-term peaceful solution.” The District Supervisor was also given strengthened powers equal to the Bonn Powers, to increasingly facilitate/force reform and implementation of the DPA. 55

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Final Award, 5 March 1999 The ultimate resolution of this outstanding Dayton legacy was the compromise that had perhaps all along been the only possible solution. The Final Award, issued on 5 March 1999, established the District of Brcˇko as a special administrative district that would be shared by both Entities. The key elements of the Final Award can be summarized as follows: • • • •

the District would exist as a “condominium,” with the territory simultaneously part of the Federation and the RS; the international supervisory regime would continue indeﬁnitely; the Inter-Entity Boundary Line (IEBL) would continue in place without change pending implementation of the District plan by the Supervisor; the District would exist “under the sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” being subject to the common institutions of BiH. All other powers would be delegated by the two Entities to the District government.18

A revised Annex issued on 18 August 1999 further increased the Supervisor’s powers and provided more details on thirteen speciﬁcally noted objectives.19 The Final Award was not a bolt from the blue – some Balkan watchers had already suggested that Brcˇko be made an autonomous district, and the decisions leading up to the Final Award had suggested that a compromise solution might be in the making.20 In some ways, the progressively robust Brcˇko status decision simply reﬂected the growing impatience of the international community and its willingness to aggressively pursue and force its reform agenda on the country. Both Brcˇko and BiH generally needed to make similar reforms and changes. However, for a variety of reasons it would in many ways be easier for the Brcˇko Supervisor to exercise authority in pushing forward an agenda.

Developing democratic structures and systems The structures and systems needed for any viable democratic state are numerous.21 The following section surveys a selection: local governance, rule of law, education reform, and elections. Governance One necessary aspect of democratic transition is the reform of governance systems, structures and practices at all levels. While similar broad efforts have been initiated in both Brcˇko and BiH generally, they have been implemented more quickly in Brcˇko, in a more sweeping manner and have yielded more immediate results. In terms of the structure and systems of governance, Brcˇko District has clearly had a more limited array of challenges facing it than the state of BiH as a whole, which has had to deal with governance at the state, entity, 56

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canton, and municipal level. Brcˇko District is, in both size and scope of services, more comparable to a municipality than to any other level of governance. As such, some brief comments on the parallel reform efforts of local government structures are informative. Governance reform in BiH has been slow. The government only explicitly pledged its support for public administration reform in March 2003. Elected ofﬁcials, for reasons of basic partisan politics, bureaucratic entropy or the zero-sum politics of nationalism, have been slow to adopt governance reforms recognized as necessary for future European Union (EU) accession. Municipal reform efforts have been ongoing in BiH since 1997/1998, through a focus on both good governance (transparency, accountability) and the technicalities of public administration (public ﬁnance management, civil service reform, etc.), with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and several development agencies supporting these efforts in selected target municipalities. However, while some progress has been made in introducing best practices in municipal governance, the degree to which recommendations have improved the lives of citizens of the target municipalities remains uneven. Freedom of information legislation has been slowly implemented, and has not yet become a part of the citizen-activist or journalist’s toolbox. While a law on local self-government consistent with European standards was adopted in the RS in October 2004, continued opposition among Croats who fear losing the power they hold at canton level has obstructed similar legislation in the Federation. Audits continue to reveal fraud and improper management of public funds. Municipalities remain overstaffed, often by un- or under-qualiﬁed personnel in their positions only due to political allegiances. There is still signiﬁcant work to be done to improve local governance, as illustrated by a substantial $20,000,000 USAID-Sida (Swedish International Development Agency) three-year initiative to reform municipal governance begun in 2005. Brcˇko’s experience has been different in many ways. In the absence of an elected local assembly, a twenty-nine-member District Assembly was established and carefully ﬁlled by the Supervisor, who selected members according to ethnicity, politics and gender. The result was an Assembly of thirteen Serbs, nine Bosniaks, and seven Croats, with a Bosniak as the Assembly President.22 Rather than enshrine ethnicity and ethnic quotas directly into the laws of the new District, varying requirements for the passage of legislation served as power-sharing safeguards. (It is worth noting, however, that an “informal national key” of 2:2:1 for public service jobs has prevailed.)23 Reform needed in the bureaucratic machinery of governance was also driven by the Supervisor. The three governments managing Brcˇko were not efﬁcient, transparent or effective. Unifying, downsizing and rationalizing these structures, and ending the ethnic-focus that had permeated basic governance and the provision of public services, was viewed early on as a key priority. USAID established a District Management Team (DMT) to begin the process of merging 57

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these three ethnically based systems into one, single government structure. The DMT was tasked with the consolidation, rationalization and legalization of the government’s functions and services; improvement of government personnel management and performance; the planning and initiation of an economic development plan; the establishment of transparent and professional budgeting and ﬁnance management operations; and generally enhanced government transparency and accountability.24 Following on the work of the DMT, a city management advisor funded ﬁrst through USAID and then directly through OHR-North continued reforms in these and other areas.25 These goals are similar to the goals of public administration reform in BiH generally, but within the conﬁnes of Brcˇko have been more easily pushed through. For example, the reform of government personnel in the District government is instructive. In this matter, the Supervisor had signiﬁcantly more leeway in pushing reform than did others seeking reform in BiH as a whole, initiating a process through which all staff positions and personnel were reviewed and retained according to an assessment. This move allowed for a virtual culling of staff.26 After reform, the government was administered by a staff of 2,400, reﬂecting an ethnic ratio (45 percent Serb, 37 percent Bosniak and 17 percent Croat) that generally corresponded with an estimated ethnic breakdown of the population in general.27 (In comparison, in 2005, after over a year of reform in Mostar, no public staff had been downsized.) While concentrated effort and resources in a deﬁned region led to visible results, there have been signs that the District’s ﬁrst elected government may not put performance over politics. The establishment of the government and the appointment of department heads have in many cases swept away the institutional memory that had been building up over the past several years, as political horse-trading has replaced technocrats with political appointees. One observer working on political reform in the District likened the process to a “political feeding frenzy,” suggesting that years of pent-up partisan politics has blatantly manifested itself in this process. Others have expressed a certain acceptance of the turnover, noting that while the new blood could be better, it could be worse.28 It is too soon to tell whether the District will continue reform at a faster pace than the rest of the country after this early round of politicking settles. Rule of law Although rule of law reforms face a much more complex range of challenges at state level, they also offer insights into the different experiences of Brcˇko and BiH. In BiH, legislative reform has proceeded in a piecemeal fashion across several dysfunctional yet interconnected levels of governance. As with basic governance structures and practices, legislation tends to be studied by politicians not in terms of their general harmonization with EU standards, but in terms of how it could narrowly affect national group power bases in the cantons or Entities. Laws have not been introduced systematically or as a part of a holistic 58

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reform process, making it difﬁcult to ensure harmonization of intersecting legal elements. However, some milestones have been achieved. For example, the BiH Criminal Code (inspired by the Brcˇko code) was imposed by the High Representative in January 2003, and implementation is underway. The High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC) was established in May 2004 to regulate the judiciary, and has had progressively less of an international presence. The existence of a transitional administration in Brcˇko allowed the legal reform process to proceed in a more thorough fashion. The Brcˇko Law Revision Commission (BLRC) was established in June 1999, as mandated by the Final Award.29 The Commission was tasked to review existing legislation and “propose modiﬁcations of existing laws to produce a uniform system of laws throughout the District.”30 This resulted in a process that was more akin to major surgery than a band-aid approach, as signiﬁcant reforms aimed at ensuring consistency with EU standards led to the drafting of over forty laws, by-laws and regulations before the Commission was disbanded in October 2001. The judicial reforms implemented in Brcˇko in 2001 were similarly sweeping, as all judges and prosecutors were suspended, and then reappointed – a process resulting in a replacement rate much higher than in BiH generally, which relied on a different vetting procedure.31 Brcˇko was the ﬁrst jurisdiction to reorganize and build an independent judiciary, and modern criminal and civil codes were introduced. These changes have resulted in a system with few backlogs and little corruption.32 In terms of public safety and security, another issue related to the broad spectrum of rule of law is policing. The UN International Police Task Force (IPTF) worked with the BiH police forces from 1996 through 2002. A much smaller EU Police Mission (EUPM) has since assumed the police reform mandate, though it has focused on higher level issues with the relevant ministries. Reform discussions are underway at the time of this writing, being driven by the prospect of EU membership requirements. In comparison to the complex challenges that continue to face police reformers in BiH generally, Brcˇko has been deemed a success. The ﬁrst multi-ethnic police force began operating on 31 December 1997, and was the ﬁrst to be certiﬁed according to professional and democratic standards by the United Nations IPTF. Polling conducted by the U.S. Department of State in 2002 revealed a favorable opinion of the police and safety situation in Brcˇko, with 91 percent of Bosniaks, 86 percent of Croats and 70 percent of Serbs reporting they feel either very or somewhat safe in Brcˇko, and 87 percent of Bosniaks, 83 percent of Croats and 60 percent of Serbs agreeing that they could trust the police to protect everyone in Brcˇko, regardless of nationality.33 (This is all the more remarkable when one considers the role that police had in wartime ethnic cleansing operations in Brcˇko, and reﬂects a huge vote of trust.) Approval rates among Bosnian Serb respondents, however, have been lower than among Bosniak and Bosnian Croat neighbors – a trend that will be explored more below. In 2002 in BiH as a whole, polling reveals a similar level of conﬁdence in the police, with 59

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81 percent of Bosniaks, 72 percent of Croats and 70 percent of Serbs noting conﬁdence in the institution.34 Additional polling in 2004 revealed that 69.5 percent of respondents in Brcˇko reported having trust in the District police, 66.6 percent trusting the District justice system, and 58.6 percent trusting the Brcˇko District government generally.35 In comparison, in BiH as a whole, a poll conducted in the third quarter of 2004 asked participants if they were “entirely or largely satisﬁed with actions taken by the police in relation to a request for assistance.” Approximately 48 percent of respondents in Bosniak majority areas, 38 percent of respondents in Croat majority areas, and 45 percent of respondents in Serb majority areas, noted their satisfaction.36 A review of this data reveals that there are not signiﬁcant differences in public opinion on police or the judiciary in BiH or in Brcˇko, though the police approval rating in 2004 tends to be higher in Brcˇko than in BiH as a whole. Different procedures and different results seemingly lead to fairly similar levels of respondent satisfaction. However, it is possible that satisfaction with police forces in both BiH and Brcˇko could change once far-reaching reforms are adopted and implemented. Ofﬁcials of the Brcˇko District government and the Supervisor have expressed concern that some of the changes proposed as a part of the police reform effort might fail to take the District’s special circumstances into consideration. The impact of further reforms remains to be seen. Education Education has been used as a nationalist tool since the war, with children learning from politicized curricula and segregated in a way that precludes hope for a uniﬁed future citizenry. While technical reform and modernization efforts had been ongoing in BiH since 1998, in the general absence of real progress the international community began a concerted state-wide campaign aimed at depoliticizing education in mid-2002.37 In the wake of signiﬁcant international pressure, a state-level Framework Law on Primary and Secondary Education was adopted in June 2003. Progress has been made on removing nationalist symbols from schools, but there is still resistance on the uniﬁcation of “two schools under one roof,” and on reform of higher education legislation. Again, the Brcˇko reform path was different. The Brcˇko Supervisor established an Education Department in July 1999, and the Annex to the Final Award conﬁrmed the need to integrate the education system. The need for reform became clear in October 2000 as over 1,000 protesting Bosnian Serb students (widely assumed to have been incited by nationalist agitators) demanded separate schools, rather than the segregated morning/afternoon shift system already in place. Bosniak students were injured in the melee and demanded better protection from the local and international authorities struggling to mediate the situation.38 An education law was drafted by the BLRC after a series of public fora on the issue, and when the District government failed to pass the new, unitary law, 60

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Supervisor Clarke imposed the Law on Education, together with a harmonized curriculum, on 5 July 2001. The new curriculum was peacefully implemented at the start of the 2001 school year. Considering that throughout the country there remain problems with school integration this has been a remarkable success. Public opinion data collected in Brcˇko in spring 2002 indicated general support for multiethnic education, though again enthusiasm was much weaker among Bosnian Serb respondents than among the other two groups (see Table 3.1). A comparison of polling data collected in 2004 offers some more noticeable differences between respondents in Brcˇko and respondents in BiH, suggesting that acceptance of depoliticized education in Brcˇko has run deeper than in BiH (see Table 3.2). These comparisons are indicative of some possible trends. In terms of language and education, Croats in Brcˇko are more comfortable with language policies that allow people to speak the variant of the language they prefer, perhaps reﬂecting the success of Brcˇko’s education reform approach, and the continuing politicization of language among Croats in the rest of the country. Bosniaks and Serbs in Brcˇko are slightly more comfortable in this respect as well. In general these ﬁndings may indicate that Brcˇko’s citizens have had more time to adjust to integrated schooling, while in BiH in general citizens are still adjusting. They may also reﬂect the difference in politics in the two areas: education has been used as a political rallying tool in BiH since the end of the war, whereas in Brcˇko politicians have had less reason to rally in the absence of local elections until 2004. It will be important to follow future trends, to determine whether or not such public sentiments converge. Elections in Brcˇko While the election-driven peace implementation strategy used in BiH was not applied in Brcˇko, there is relevant election data that reﬂects political sentiments among citizens of the District. The ﬁrst post-war municipal elections held in September 1997 were marked by fraud and confusion in Brcˇko, as in many other parts of the country, and nationalist Serb parties gained thirty of the ﬁfty-six

Table 3.1 Brcˇko, opinions on education, 2002a

Children should go to the same schools Students should be taught from the same curriculum Support for school system where children are educated together

Bosniaks

Croats

Serbs

95% 94%

84% 80%

48% 41%

95%

84%

44%

Note a Department of State Ofﬁce of Research Opinion Analysis, 20 June 2002.

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Table 3.2 BiH and Brcˇko education opinions, 2004a Question (Brcˇko: Oct. 2004)

Brcˇko

Question (BiH: May 2004)

BiH

Pupils/students in schools/ universities should freely speak in language they do or want to speak, regardless where the school/university is placed in BiH (% agree/somewhat agree)

BK: 94.7% BC: 84% BS: 95.6%

Pupils/students in schools/ BK: 74.1% universities should freely speak BC: 82.2% in language they speak or wish BS: 77.3% to speak, regardless of the location in BiH where the school/ university is located

Teachers and professors should have the classes in language they do or want to speak, regardless where the school/ university is placed

BK: 72.5% BC: 63.6% BS: 67.4%

Teachers and professors should conduct lessons and lectures in the language they speak or wish to speak regardless of the location in BiH where the school/university is located

BK: 60.4% BC: 36% BS: 52.5%

It is entirely irrelevant in what language the classes in schools/ universities are being held, as all these languages are very similar

BK: 75% BC: 68% BS: 62.1%

It is not important in which language lessons and lectures are conducted in schools and universities as all of these languages are very similar

BK: 56.1% BC: 30.3% BS: 50.7%

Pupils should attend the schools/ universities where the classes are being held exclusively in the language they do or want to speak

BK: 58.6% BC: 47.1% BS: 55.8%

Pupils and students should attend school or university where lessons/lectures are conducted exclusively in the language they speak or wish to speak

BK: 61.0% BC: 85.1% BS: 75.8%

Pupils/students in schools/ universities should not be learning at all about the events from recent BiH history, when there is a disagreement

BK: 17.6% BC: 25.8% BS: 14.8%

Pupils and students should not be taught at all about all events in the recent history of BiH about which there is disagreement

BK: 13.4% BC: 3% BS: 15.1%

It would be best if all pupils/ students are familiarized with all 3 versions of the events from recent BiH history

BK: 45.1% BC: 51.9% BS: 36.1%

As the three peoples in BiH view some of the important events in the recent history of BiH in different ways, it is best that pupils and students are familiarized with all three versions of those events

BK: 51.3% BC: 23.2% BS: 28.8%

Pupils/students in schools/ universities should not be learning about the recent BiH history

BK: 15.3% BC: 5.9% BS: 18.2%

Pupils/students in schools and universities should not be taught about the recent history of BiH at all

BK: 8.8% BC: 13.6% BS: 15.9%

It is the best if the pupils/students from each ethnic group learn separately about their history, regardless of the cost that it will produce

BK: 9.2% BC: 5.3% BS: 22.7%

As it is difﬁcult to write history with which all three peoples in BiH agree, it is best that pupils/students are taught separately their own history regardless of cost

BK: 19.9% BC: 56.4% BS: 32.2%

Note a Polling data from surveys conducted by Prism Research. The polling in Brcˇko was conducted among 500 respondents in the District in autumn 2004. The BiH-polling was conducted in spring 2004, with 2,000 people surveyed. (People in Brcˇko were included in the BiH-wide poll, but in numbers too small to be signiﬁcant.)

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seats in the municipal assembly. However, while the results were accepted and implemented in the rest of BiH, in Brcˇko the winners would not have the chance to serve their mandates. Supervisor Farrand subsequently ordered that Brcˇko’s governing structures be based both on the election results and on the electoral register, required multi-ethnic and representative administration of public services, and required qualiﬁed majority voting in the assembly on issues of vital national interest.39 Rather than begin his supervision of the District with a nationalist government in place, Farrand sought a kinder, gentler, more representative Assembly. Local elections would not be held again until 2004. The arbitration decisions mentioned elections, noting that the OSCE and others should ensure free and fair elections before the end of the international supervision, but (perhaps learning from the experience of elections in BiH) did not specify a timeframe. The March 1997 Brcˇko Implementation Conference held in Vienna noted that elections should be held as soon as possible.40 In early 2000, Supervisor Farrand stated that he intended to wait two years before calling elections.41 Even without local elections in this time period, however, it is possible to gauge political sentiment in the District. In the October 2002 general elections, 40 percent of Brcˇko residents voted, and while there was support for nationalist parties, it was lower than among citizens in the Federation or RS. An analysis by the International Crisis Group notes the following highlights:42 • • • • •

Turnout for RS races was 38 percent; turnout for Federation races was 50 percent. Dragan Covic (HDZ-BiH, Croatian Democratic Union-BiH) in Brcˇko won 53 percent of vote for the Croat Presidency seat, but 62 percent overall. Haris Silajdzic (SBiH, Party for BiH) took 45 percent in Brcˇko for the Bosniak Presidency seat, but 35 percent overall. Sulejman Tihic (SDA, Party of Democratic Action) took 31 percent in Brcˇko for the Bosniak Presidency seat, and 37 percent overall. Dragan Cavic (SDS, Serb Democratic Party) took 44 percent in Brcˇko and 36 percent overall.

Department of State polling in 2002 also sought to assess citizen perceptions on when Brcˇko District elections should be held. According to their results approximately half of respondents opted for immediate Assembly elections, less than 10 percent supported elections in 2003, and only a small number wanted elections delayed until 2004 (a full third declined to express an opinion.)43 After several years of transitional administration, there was an apparent interest in voting for political representation. Although in 2003 there was still concern (particularly among the Americans) that an election would result in an SDS victory, Clarke agreed with citizen sentiment, and decided that 2004 would be the year for Brcˇko’s citizens to go to the polls.44 In 2004, Brcˇko had its ﬁrst elections since 1997, with a turnout of over 63

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32,000 voters. The three top winners were SDP (Social Democratic Party) with 18.6 percent, SDS with 17.29 percent and SDA with 10.34 percent. HDZ-BiH won 7.64 percent, and smaller parties made up the balance.45 Some analysts were pleasantly surprised by the results. One observer noted that the good showing of several of the smaller parties (rather than just the three main nationalist parties) demonstrates both their good performance and the preferences of an electorate interested in voting for parties most likely to continue the reforms that have made the District’s economy strong – voting with their pocketbooks rather than out of fear. Additionally, the strong showing of Croat voters ensured their inﬂuence – an inﬂuence that has often failed to be exploited through boycotts or general low turnout.46 Brcˇko’s ﬁrst democratically elected government is not dominated by the nationalist parties that saw the country through the war, though they enjoyed a strong showing. The Brcˇko District Assembly endorsed Mayor Mirsad Djapo’s (SDP) government on 18 January 2005. It includes ﬁve Serb heads of department, four Bosniaks and two Croats, representing a total of eight parties. A (possibly) positive sign of the slow normalization of politics is the party squabbling over government positions; rather than being focused on inter-party (among national groups) bickering, the frustrations have been intra-party, as competing Croat, Serb or other parties have bickered among themselves.47 In any case, the elected ofﬁcials will have to work to ensure that they are not tossed out in four years for poor performance – a possibility that could open the way for a delayed nationalist-led government in the District. This would put the District in a position similar to that of much of BiH – a country dominated by nationalist parties for all of the post-war years except a two-year internationally-pressured hiatus between 2000 and 2002. Whether or not the District’s ﬁrst elected government delivers remains to be seen.

Hearts and minds: conﬁdence in Brcˇko, conﬁdence in BiH Does success in itself breed success? Has Brcˇko’s special status had an effect on people’s perceptions of the country? Or does the fact that both Brcˇko and BiH are beginning to converge in terms of reform progress (after having Brcˇko out ahead for a few years) mean that citizen sentiment is basically the same throughout the country? Some of the relevant polling data on citizen sentiment suggests tentative conclusions that should be further explored as these democratization processes solidify. The 2002 public opinion poll commissioned by the Department of State revealed that 71 percent of Brcˇko’s residents overall supported the creation of the multinational District, 66 percent assessed its impact favorably and 60 percent felt the District was headed in the right direction. 47 percent of respondents said that BiH was heading in the right direction. It also yielded interesting comparative data on ethnic relations and the level of support for a single Bosnian state, with responses compared to BiH responses generally (see Table 3.3). 64

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Table 3.3 Brcˇko opinions, 2002a Brcˇko Brcˇko Brcˇko BiH BiH BiH Bosniaks Croats Serbs Bosniaks Croats Serbs Ethnic relations in District very/somewhat good Future of BiH – living together Future of BiH – inevitable partition Support for a single Bosnian State

86% 91% 6% 96%

92% 73% 22% 89%

70% 41% 54% 52%

85% 90% 4% 98%

72% 38% 47% 56%

30% 37% 60% 29%

Note a Department of State Ofﬁce of Research Opinion Analysis, “Brcˇko Residents Prefer Uniﬁed Bosnia,” M-48-02, 19 June 2002, and Department of State Ofﬁce of Research Opinion Analysis, “Brcˇko Residents Like District’s Unique Status,” M-48-02, 14 June 2002.

However the poll also revealed weak conﬁdence in public institutions (with the exception of the police) and, when broken down by ethnic group, Serbs, true to form, were more likely to be negative in general than Bosniaks or Croats. It is clear that Serbs are the least enthusiastic of Brcˇko District’s other ethnic groups – at times much less so than their Bosniak or Croat counterparts. This trend continued in polling data collected in separate polls in 2004 on the direction of politics and prospects for the future. 52 percent of Brcˇko’s Bosniaks, 67 percent of its Croats and 38 percent of its Serbs think that the District is heading in the right direction.48 In BiH as a whole, 41.8 percent of Bosniaks, 37.8 percent of Croats and 25.1 percent of Serbs think that there is a general improvement in the direction of BiH politics.49 Some questions related to constitutional change also provide food for thought with regard to citizen identities and political viewpoints in the two cases under review. When asked whether they agree that the BiH constitution should be changed to take the “ethnic key” out of the BiH Presidency, in Brcˇko 75.6 percent of Bosniaks, 82.9 percent of Croats and 68.4 percent of Serbs note their agreement, while in BiH 75 percent of Bosniaks, 40.5 percent of Croats and 53.1 percent of Serbs agree.50 While Bosniak responses are more or less similar in Brcˇko and in BiH generally, there is considerably more support for constitutional change among Croats in Brcˇko, and also more support for such reform among Serbs in Brcˇko. This data provide a glimpse into the public sentiment of citizens in both BiH and Brcˇko, and suggest public response to many of the postwar peace implementation efforts over the past ten years. However, this selection of data does reveal one clear trend: Brcˇko’s Bosniaks and Croats tend to be more satisﬁed with the status quo of the District, more supportive of its structures and more optimistic about its future, while Serbs still demonstrate pessimism and skepticism in each of these areas. This could be explained in several ways. As Serbs made up 99 percent of the immediate post-war population, there may be a sense that the gains of non-Serbs are their loss. International supervision aimed at ensuring multi-ethnicity through power-sharing is therefore seen 65

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as weakening their previous hold and inﬂuence on the area. Additionally, throughout BiH there has tended to be more frustration and skepticism among Serbs in terms of relations with the international community. Likewise, Bosniaks and Croats who have been given the space to return to their pre-war Brcˇko homes and participate in public life have reason to be satisﬁed with the status quo as it has unfolded. However, when compared to BiH-wide data, Brcˇko’s Serbs are slightly more supportive of pro-BiH sentiments. Reviews of election data and polling data lead to the same question: have Brcˇko’s Serbs changed, and if not, has Brcˇko itself changed? Similarly, if Brcˇko’s Serbs are still dissatisfied with the status of the District after these reform processes and in spite of the generally better economic situation vis-àvis the rest of country, what might such sentiments reflect about the ongoing struggle to develop a united BiH state, and future identity? And, if Serb citizens continue to be reluctant partners in both the Brcˇko and BiH reform processes, how will the normalization of Brcˇko District affect the region, either in terms of a maintained special status or some level of integration in BiH?

Concluding thoughts The process by which Brcˇko District will be “de-internationalized” is being debated at the time of writing. The Final Award stipulates that the Arbitration Tribunal will remain in effect until the District Supervisor, with the approval of the High Representative, attests that the Entities have fulﬁlled their obligations, and that District institutions are functioning effectively and apparently permanently. The current Supervisor, U.S. diplomat Susan Johnson, is hesitant to move the process forward too quickly, though there are signs that the U.S. is willing to pull back more quickly than anticipated. There is local resistance as well, reﬂecting a reluctance among ofﬁcials and citizens to lose their special status and the tangible beneﬁts that have sprung from this status, a perception that being a part of the broader BiH has nothing to offer, and a fear of the unknown. There is also a serious debate concerning how a normalized Brcˇko will ﬁt into the overall structure of BiH – an issue that gains importance in light of increasing calls for constitutional reform. Critics will often note that the Brcˇko experience is unique and impossible to replicate throughout BiH, due to what might be termed the “Brcˇko advantage:” a combination of aid (and its corollary, sustained attention) and authority that have stacked the deck in a favorable way. They are in many ways correct. Money has played a role in District government reform. U.S. contributions to the District are estimated to have been an average of $2 million per year since 1997, not counting USAID. By 2002 more than 130 million KM (1,450 KM per resident) had been invested in Brcˇko by international donors, and more has been given or invested since that time.51 Whereas government salaries are typically low in BiH, creating conditions in which corruption and bribery are common, higher 66

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budgets in Brcˇko, drawn both from aid as well as from more efﬁciently collected public revenues,52 help to ensure a “living wage.” An expanding pie for everyone seems to help alleviate tensions, and promote acceptance of reform. However, the rest of BiH has not in comparison been neglected, with over $7 billion being poured into the country by international actors since 1995 for a combination of reconstruction and development. It is useful to note that massive amounts of money have also been poured into Mostar in attempts to unify and reform that divided city, but with fewer results.53 Potential lessons learned should not be rejected on the basis of Brcˇko’s uniqueness. Based on his review of the Brcˇko decision and its impact, Peter Farrand highlights four criteria necessary for successful international peacekeeping operations: a strong military presence with enforcement authority; an empowered and neutral civilian administrator; an independent legal revision body to oversee legal and constitutional reform; and a time-frame not encumbered or limited by an end-date.54 Lessons might also be learned in terms of the conditions in which the international community approaches democratization. One possible advantage in Brcˇko has been the concentration of support from the U.S., which has been the clear lead player in the region (to the extent that it has at times been viewed as an American “ﬁefdom”).55 Such a lead role can make it easier to set an agenda for reform. This can be seen in contrast to the broader international community effort in BiH, in which gaining consensus among organizations is necessary (and often difﬁcult) even before the actual work on the ground begins. While multilateralism clearly has its strengths, to be most effective it must still be coordinated and focused. Even if one considers these broad lessons – money, authority and attention – success will not necessarily be quick or guaranteed. Realistic expectations matter. In a 2005 review on Russia and Chechnya, the author noted that, “It would be amazing, after decades of totalitarianism and centuries of autocracy, if Russia were not a corrupt, authoritarian and brutal place.”56 A similarly realistic view of the reconstruction of BiH would be a welcome change from critics claiming that if reforms have not been implemented and progress made in a mere ﬁve, seven or nine years, the effort must be a failure. It will take time for structures and systems to be put into place, and even more time for these processes to translate into deep-rooted and internalized changes in the hearts and minds of citizens. This chapter provides an early look at these issues, and identiﬁes a clear need for additional research. The extent to which Brcˇko, or BiH as a whole, will be viewed as a success story or an error in policy or its implementation, will ultimately be determined not by contemporary policy analysts or observers, but by historians reﬂecting on the experience of decades of development, successes and setbacks. Ten years is not an adequate time-frame for serious consideration. However, the lessons that these cases can offer to students and practitioners of democratization and state-building are potentially rich, and undoubtedly deserve future attention. 67

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Notes 1 This chapter is a part of a broader dissertation examining post-Dayton democratization strategies. 2 Much of the theoretical framework is inspired by the work of the “democracy study pioneers” including Samuel P. Huntington, Robert A. Dahl, Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe Schmitter, Michael W. Doyle, Juan J. Linz, and Alfred Stepan. The more practice-oriented “democracy implementation” work is inﬂuenced in part by Larry Diamond Fareed Zakaria and Thomas Carothers. 3 Most notably Terrence Lyons, “Peace and Elections in Liberia,” in Post-conﬂict Elections, Democratization and International Assistance, Krishna Kumar (ed.), Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998, pp. 177–194; Stephen John Stedman, Donald Rothchild, and Elizabeth M. Cousens (eds), Ending Civil Wars: The Implementation of Peace Agreements, Boulder: Lynne Rienner Press, 2002; and Jack Snyder, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conﬂict, New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2000. 4 Including Roland Paris, At War’s End: Building Peace after Civil Conﬂict, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004; Simon Chesterman, You the People: The United Nations, Transitional Administration and State-Building, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; Michael W. Doyle, “Strategy and Transitional Authority,” in Yossi Shain and Juan J. Linz, Between States: Interim Governments and Democratic Transitions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. 5 Including reports of the European Stability Initiative (ESI), available at www.esiweb.org, and David Chandler, Bosnia: Faking Democracy After Dayton, London: Pluto Press, 1999. 6 Public opinion polling has its weaknesses. See for example, Michael Wheeler, Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics, W. W. Norton & Co Inc., 1976; Roger Tourangeau, Lance J. Rips, and Kenneth Rasinski, The Psychology of Survey Response, Cambridge University Press, 2000; John R. Zaller, James H. Kuklinski, and Dennis Chong, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion, Cambridge University Press, 1992; Benjamin Ginsberg, The Captive Public: How Mass Opinion Promotes State Power, Basic Books, 1986. 7 The literature on democracy and democratization offers many different deﬁnitions of the word “democracy.” The most simple deﬁnitions focus solely on the existence of free and fair elections, while the more robust require a certain level of constitutional and human rights protections. For this study, a more robust deﬁnition of democracy that includes both electoral and liberalizing elements is used. 8 According to the 1991 census, the municipality was comprised of approximately 44 percent Bosniaks, 25 percent Croat, 21 percent Serb and 9 percent other. 9 Some of the JNA units that had been ﬁghting in Croatia moved to Brcˇko after the signing of a ceaseﬁre in Croatia on 2 January 1992. Martin Spegelj, “The First Phase, 1990–1992: the JNA Prepares for Aggression and Croatia for Defence,” in The War in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1991–1995, London: Frank Cass, 2001 p. 155. 10 Tim Judah, The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997, p. 220. 11 David Owen, Balkan Odyssey, London: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1995; James Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will: International Diplomacy and the Yugoslav War, New York: Columbia University Press, 1997, p. 247; Steven L. Burg and Paul S. Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic Conﬂict and International Intervention, London: M. E. Sharpe, 1999, p. 276. 12 See Richard Holbrooke, To End a War, New York: Random House, 1999; Carl Bildt, Peace Journey: The Struggle for Peace in Bosnia, London: Weidenfeld and Nicol-

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13

14 15

16 17

18 19

20 21

22 23 24 25

26

27

28 29

son, 1998; Wesley K. Clark, Waging Modern War, New York: Public Affairs, 2001. See also Burg and Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina, p. 366. The Bonn Powers granted by the Peace Implementation Council in December 1997 provided the High Representative with the ability to impose legislation not adopted by local bodies, and to remove ofﬁcials (elected and appointed) considered to be obstructing the peace implementation process. Bildt, Peace Journey, p. 6. For a thorough review of the inter-party, intra-party and country-wide political developments that affected the gradual issuance of arbitration decisions, see International Crisis Group, Bosnia’s Brcˇko: Getting In, Getting On and Getting Out, Sarajevo/ Brussels, 2003. Brcˇko Arbitral Tribunal for Dispute Over the Inter-Entity Boundary in Brcˇko Area Award, Rome, 14 February 1997, I. B. RS politics had been unbalanced by the growing rift between Biljana Plavsic’s SDS base in Banja Luka and the Pale-based faction, as well as the reform-oriented comments made by Milorad Dodik upon his installation as Prime Minister of the RS. See Supplemental Award of the Brcˇko Arbitral Tribunal for Dispute Over the Inter-Entity Boundary in the Brcˇko Area, 15 March 1998. See Brcˇko Final Award, 5 March 1999, emphasis added. 1) Status of District residents; 2) the District Assembly; 3) the Executive Board; 4) District Manager; 5) Judicial and Penal System; 6) Law Revision Commission; 7) Law enforcement; 8) Customs service; 9) Taxation and ﬁnance matters; 10) Voting; 11) Symbols; 12) Educational curriculum; 13) Public properties. On 8 February 1999 the International Crisis Group (ICG) published a report advocating that Brcˇko be made an autonomous district, Brcˇko: A Comprehensive Solution, Sarajevo/Brussels, 8 February 1999. For a thorough review of these elements of democratization strategies, see Thomas Carothers, Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve, New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999. USAID, Freedom House, UNDP, International IDEA and other democracy promotion organizations use similar typologies in their work and assessments. ICG Report 2003, Bosnia’s Brcˇko, pp. 12–13. Ibid., p. 13. Allan Rosenbaum, Report to USAID Bosnia and Herzegovina on the Brcˇko Municipal Assistance Activity, December 2001. Richard Robinson, the City Management Advisor who worked both through PADCO and OHR-North, points out the ease of reform in Brcˇko even in comparison to a nonpost-conﬂict zone such as Romania, where implementation is much more difﬁcult than in Brcˇko due to local politics. Personal interview, October 2005. Appropriate stafﬁng rations were reached through a combination of the review of current employees, the review of 2,000 additional applicants, and over 7,000 interviews. This process was completed in January 2002. William Sommers, “Brcˇko District: Experiment to Experience,” 10th NISPAcee Annual Conference, Delivery Public Services in CEE Countries: Trends and Developments, April 2002. The estimated population breakdown is approximately 40 percent Serb, 40 percent Bosniak, and 20 percent Croat. Allan Rosenbaum, “Building One Local Government from Three: A Progress Report from Brcˇko,” in Managing Hatred and Distrust: The Prognosis for post-Conﬂict Settlement in Multiethnic Communities in the Former Yugoslavia, Budapest: Open Society Institute, 2004, p. 46. Interviews with Colleen Quinn, Richard Robinson, and David Goode (National Democratic Institute). Brcˇko Final Award Annex, 6.

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30 Brcˇko Law Revision Commission Chairman’s Final Report, 31 December 2001. 31 See for example, “Courting Disaster: The Misrule of Law in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” International Crisis Group Balkans Report, Number 127, 25 March 2002. 32 Henry Clarke, “Brcˇko District: An Example of Progress in the Basic Reforms in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Wilson Center East European Studies Noon Discussion, 4 February 2004. 33 Department of State Ofﬁce of Research Opinion Analysis, 16 July 2002. (Note: polling was conducted through face-to-face interviews with a representative sample of 990 adults, from 6–22 April 2002.) 34 In 2002 the question asked was, “Do you have conﬁdence in the work of the following institutions?” In 2003, the question was, “To what extent do you approve the work of the following institutions?” UNDP Early Warning System Annual Report, 2002 and 2003, available at www.undp.ba. 35 Preliminary Highlights of July 2004 Public Opinion Research, Brcˇko District, National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, 1 August 2004. 36 UNDP Early Warning System Quarterly Report, July–September 2004. 37 For a review of the early years of the education reform process in BiH, see Valery Perry, “Reading, Writing and Reconciliation: Educational Reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” ECMI Working Paper #18, September 2003, at http://www. ecmi.de/download/working_paper_18.pdf 38 These riots were not based simply on educational issues, but reﬂected the continuing opposition among hardliners to integration and the frustrations that lingered after the decision to make Brcˇko a special autonomous district. 39 ICG Report 2003, Bosnia’s Brcˇko, p. 5. 40 Brcˇko Implementation Conference – Chairman’s Conclusions. Vienna, 7 March 1997. 41 ICG Report 2003, Bosnia’s Brcˇko, p. 13. 42 Ibid., p. 24. 43 Department of State Ofﬁce of Research Opinion Analysis, 29 July 2002. 44 Clarke, “Brcˇko District.” 45 See www.izbori.ba for full election results. 46 Personal interview, Mark Wheeler, OSCE Mission to BiH, Sarajevo, 12 January 2005. 47 Interview with Mark Wheeler. 48 Preliminary Highlights of July 2004 Public Opinion research, Brcˇko District, National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, 1 August 2004. 49 UNDP Early Warning System Quarterly Report, July–September 2004. 50 Polling data from surveys conducted in autumn 2004 by Prism Research. 51 ICG Report 2003, Bosnia’s Brcˇko, p. 17. 52 Clarke, “Brcˇko District.” 53 A former political ofﬁcer at the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo responsible for covering both Brcˇko and Mostar noted a clear difference in approach and results, explaining that while in Brcˇko cooperation among politicians and the international community was excellent, in Mostar relations were typically more adversarial. Personal interview, Colleen Quinn, July 2005. For a comparison of powersharing in Brcˇko and Mostar, see Florian Bieber, “Local Institutional Engineering: A Tale of Two Cities, Mostar and Brcˇko,” International Peacekeeping, Vol. 12, No. 3, Autumn 2005, pp. 420–433. 54 Peter Farrand, “Lessons from Brcˇko: Necessary Components for Future Internationally Supervised Territories,” Emory International Law Review, Fall 2001, p. 535. 55 Each of the four District supervisors (Robert Farrand, Gary Matthews, Henry Clarke and Susan Johnson) has been an American diplomat. 56 “Bleak House,” The Economist, 15 January 2005, p. 76.

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4 THE CLANDESTINE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR AND PEACE IN BOSNIA 1 Peter Andreas

Virtually all contemporary wars, such as in the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and West Africa, are intrastate wars.2 These wars tend to have a criminalized component: in various ways and to varying degrees they use smuggling networks and criminal actors to create and sustain the material basis for warfare. Although it is important to recognize that the political economy of all wars – large and small, old and new – have a clandestine side, it is particularly evident in intrastate conﬂicts that take place in a context of anemic state capacity, limited production, and reliance on external funding and supplies. Such conﬂicts are partly made possible by “taxing” and diverting humanitarian aid, diaspora remittances, illicit exports and clandestine trading across front lines, and blackmarket sale of looted goods.3 They may utilize quasi-private criminal combatants who operate in the absence of, alongside, and sometimes within formal military units, and who are especially prevalent when at least one side does not have a regular army and is not a full-ﬂedged state. The importance of smuggling practices and criminal actors in many intrastate wars becomes even more apparent in the context of evading international economic sanctions and arms embargoes imposed to discourage conﬂict.4 In this respect, external intervention contributes to the criminalization of a conﬂict, creating an economic opportunity structure for clandestine commerce and making the competing sides more reliant on cross-border smuggling channels. Intrastate military conﬂicts are therefore not only formally internationalized through UN monitoring, diplomatic initiatives, provision of humanitarian aid, and so on, but are also informally internationalized through a range of clandestine transnational networks used to ﬁnance and supply the warring parties and evade external control efforts. Under these conditions, war is a continuation of business by clandestine means: military success often hinges on entrepreneurial success in the murky underworld of smuggling. Moreover, the smuggling networks and embargo-busting infrastructure built up during wartime can leave a lasting legacy for the post-war reconstruction period. 71

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Drawing on interviews with former military leaders, government ofﬁcials, and in-country observers, I demonstrate the critical importance of the criminalized dimensions of the 1992–1995 Bosnian conﬂict and its aftermath.5 Although there is a substantial literature on the war in Bosnia, much of which contains valuable information on clandestine trading and criminal actors, these tend not to be the central analytical focus and are not generally highlighted as part of a causal argument. I argue that key aspects of the Bosnian conﬂict are inexplicable without taking into account the clandestine political economy of the war. As I document, access to supplies through smuggling networks and the involvement of quasi-private criminal actors as combatants are critical factors in explaining the outbreak, persistence, termination, and aftermath of the war. This includes the criminally aided and smuggling-enabled initial military power imbalance, which created high Serb expectations of a quick and easy victory and facilitated large initial territorial gains; the unexpected ability of the Bosnian government to defend itself with the help of criminal combatants and underground supply networks, as evident in the Sarajevo siege, which produced a much longer war than anyone anticipated; and the eventual shift in the military balance on the ground facilitated by evading the arms embargo, which placed Serb forces on the defensive and helped to establish the conditions for a diplomatic settlement. Finally, the criminalized side of the war has left a powerful legacy, evident in an expansive post-war smuggling economy based on political protections and informal trading networks built up during wartime. War problems have consequently turned into crime problems. In the following sections I provide a detailed tracing of the role of smuggling practices and criminal actors in the outbreak, persistence, termination, and aftermath of the Bosnian war. For comparative insight, I also provide a limited extension of the analysis to other violent conﬂicts related to the break-up of Yugoslavia. In the conclusion I brieﬂy highlight some lessons learned from the Bosnia experience that are relevant for understanding intrastate wars in general, and suggest the need for a greater integration of the study of security, political economy, and crime.

The outbreak of war In 1992, Bosnia, one of six republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, declared independence following the earlier international recognition of Slovenia and Croatia as independent states. Bosnia’s ethnic Serbs, following the leadership of the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), feared minority status in the new Bosnian state and thus opposed independence. The Bosnian Croats and Muslims, following their respective leaderships of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and the Party of Democratic Action (SDA), strongly favored independence as a way of avoiding the dominance of neighboring Serbia. As the European Community announced recognition of Bosnia as an independent state, one of the most brutal conﬂicts in recent times began between 72

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the Belgrade-aided Bosnian Serbs on one side, and Bosnian Croats and Muslims (in an on-and-off alliance of convenience) on the other. The war lasted from 6 April 1992 to 12 October 1995. Much ink has been spilled trying to explain the war in Bosnia. Some arguments stress external economic and political factors as primary explanations for the outbreak of war,6 others place greater causal weight on domestic factors, such as opportunistic political elites7 and economic competition over the redistribution of productive assets in the transition to a market-based economy,8 and still others view the conﬂict as the product of historically rooted ethnic animosities. These widely divergent perspectives operating at different levels of analysis share a tendency to take for granted or understate how the competing sides actually obtained and sustained their physical capacity to wage war in the ﬁrst place.9 Antagonistic group history, manipulative politicians, and economic crisis and transition certainly helped to create a fertile environment for conﬂict. But armed conﬂict by deﬁnition requires arms, and there is nothing automatic about the ability to acquire them. While some security scholars argue that “weapons are so readily available through so many channels that any group, including governments, bent on the use of force have no difﬁculty ﬁnding them,”10 the Bosnia experience shows that there can be great unevenness in access to weapons – and that such unevenness can powerfully shape the strategic calculus to go to war. The Bosnian Serbs had the overwhelming advantage of not only being backed by the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) but also being covertly armed through trafﬁcking networks from Belgrade. An international arms embargo was imposed on the region in September 1991 with the intention of inhibiting war, but in practice it locked in the military advantage of the Bosnian Serbs who were well positioned geographically to access arms and other supplies through smuggling channels to Yugoslavia.11 Moreover, Bosnia-based JNA forces had quietly become Bosnian Serb-dominated by early 1992.12 When the JNA ofﬁcially withdrew from Bosnia on 19 May 1992 (some six weeks after the outbreak of the war), most of the army stayed behind – along with their heavy weapons, ammunition, and supplies – and simply became part of the Bosnian Serb army. The Sarajevo government, in sharp contrast, was woefully underprepared for war,13 naively counted on international military support if war broke out, was the most vulnerable to an arms embargo, and was in an extremely weak geographic and ﬁnancial position to access arms supplies on the international black market. The pre-war covert arming of the Bosnian Serbs was substantially orchestrated by Yugoslav State Security (SDB) and the Ministry of the Interior (MUP), and facilitated by the Serb political party in Bosnia, the SDS. Two SDB ofﬁcials, Franko Simatovic (“Frenki”) and Radovan Stojicˇic (“Badzˇa”), were key architects of the arming efforts.14 JNA military generals were also selectively recruited as part of the development of a clandestine network.15 The plan that emerged in 1990 was called RAM (“frame”), and the strategic objective was to use SDS local chapters for deployment of arms and ammunition. Simatovic and Stojicˇic traveled regularly to Bosnia to organize the SDS and deploy weapons 73

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and ammunition. Mihalj Kertes, a leading member of Milosˇevic’s ruling Socialist Party, also played a central logistical role, organizing clandestine convoys of weapons and munitions to the Serb regions in Bosnia in 1990 and 1991.16 The highly successful clandestine arming effort bolstered Bosnian Serb conﬁdence that they could win quickly and decisively, enhancing their willingness and incentives to go to war. They expected a short conﬂict with limited resistance due to their enormous military power advantage. Bosnian Serb leader Nikola Koljevic was reported to have claimed in April 1992 that the war would end within ten days,17 and Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzˇic apparently expected a victory in six days.18 Judah notes that Bosnian Serb leadership possessed so many weapons that “it was convinced it would win a crushing victory within weeks.”19 The International Peace Research Institute in Stockholm calculated that Bosnian government forces were out-gunned nine-to-one by Serb forces.20 At a heated meeting of the Bosnian parliament on the night of 14–15 October 1991, Karadzˇic warned Muslim politicians: “Do not think that you will not lead Bosnia-Herzegovina to hell . . . because the Muslim people cannot defend themselves if there is war . . . How will you prevent everyone from being killed in Bosnia-Herzegovina?”21 The heavily lopsided Serb military advantage helps to explain not only their willingness and incentives to go to war, but also the speed and ease of Serb territorial gains when war broke out in April 1992. Access to clandestine arms ﬂows and irregular Yugoslav paramilitary units helped provide the means to capture large sections of eastern Bosnia in the spring of 1992. Belgrade-supported paramilitary groups were quickly mobilized for action across the border in Bosnia, while arms continued to be supplied to local Bosnian Serb militias through conduits working for the Serbian MUP.22 The covert arming of Bosnian Serbs and subcontracting of irregular Yugoslav paramilitaries helped to obscure the complicity of the Belgrade government, providing the convenient political cover of plausible deniability.23 Even as Belgrade announced that it had banned paramilitary incursions from Serbia into Bosnia and claimed that it was inhibiting such incursions, press accounts of Serbia-based paramilitary involvement in ethnic cleansing increased in late April 1992.24 Many ﬁghters from Serbia were wooed to Bosnia by the prospect of looting and selling stolen goods on the black market.25 A 1994 UN report concluded that “most of the paramilitaries sustained themselves through lootings, thefts, ransoms, and trafﬁcking in contraband.”26 Jovan Dulovic, who at that time worked as a war and crime reporter for the Belgrade daily Politika, witnessed the ethnic cleansing of the Bosnian border town of Zvornik. He recalled that the paramilitaries “looked like a bunch of gangs. All the scum of Serbia were there.”27 Once the ﬁghting stopped, the looting began. Dulovic observed that there was a hierarchy of looters, with the elite troops of Arkan’s Tigers enjoying preferential access to the most valuable assets (such as cars, gold, and money). Next in line were the Serbian Cˇ etnik Movement and the White Eagles, who took the large appliances. The leftovers went to local militias and smaller Serbia74

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based paramilitaries, who, Dulovic observed, “stripped the wires out of the walls and dismantled windows and doorframes.”28 Dulovic provided a detailed account of Serbian involvement in paramilitary activities in eastern Bosnia in his testimony at the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in mid-October 2002. The irregular paramilitary units were substantially composed of common criminals.29 In the 1980s and early 1990s, many Yugoslav criminals operating in Western Europe returned home in the face of intensifying police pressure and tighter immigration restrictions. Conveniently, “The Bosnian war had just started,” wrote a journalist for the Belgrade independent weekly Vreme, “creating the opportunity for low-risk robbery in patriotic costume”.30 Many prisoners in Serbia were also released and sent across the border to join the fighting, enticed by the promise of loot and reduced sentences. Some wellknown paramilitary leaders were gangsters with close ties to the Yugoslav State Security and Secret Police. The most infamous was Zˇeljko Razˇnatovic (“Arkan”), whose paramilitary units (“Tigers”) took a lead role in the early ethnic cleansing campaigns in eastern Bosnia.31 Arkan spent much of his youth robbing banks in Western Europe. Having escaped from prison, Arkan returned to Belgrade in the 1980s. At the end of 1990 he became the head of Delije, the official fan club of the local Red Star soccer team, from which he selectively found recruits for his newly formed Serbian Volunteer Guard. The Tigers would sometimes enter a town at the request of local Bosnian Serb political leaders. In Prijedor, a Bosnian Serb spokesperson explained that “Arkan is very expensive, but also very efficient.”32 He reportedly made a fortune on the Belgrade black market by selling looted goods from his military exploits in Bosnia.33

The persistence of war While access to smuggled arms and criminal combatants from Serbia helps to explain the outbreak of the war and the large territorial gains by Serb forces at the beginning of the war, clandestine ﬂows and the involvement of criminals is crucial in explaining why the conﬂict did not end quickly and decisively as Serb leaders had expected. Bosnian government-supported forces – including criminal gangs – organized and developed their own clandestine supply networks. Although minimal access to arms and ammunition placed the Sarajevo government on the defensive throughout most of the conﬂict, the involvement of the criminal underworld and engagement in large-scale clandestine commerce was essential in sustaining their war effort. And nowhere was this more evident than in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. The fate of Sarajevo was particularly critical: if the city had fallen or been cut in half by Serb forces, the duration and outcome of the conﬂict would likely have been radically altered. The clandestine political economy of the Sarajevo siege is essential in explaining why this did not happen. The end result was a prolonged stalemate, with Serb war aims shifting 75

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early on from taking or bisecting the city to simply bottling it up and using it as a political negotiating card. The Sarajevo siege stalemate Sarajevo, stretched out in a valley between foothills and mountains, could not have been better situated for siege planners. On 6 April 1992 Serb forces began shelling the city from hillside positions that had been prepared months in advance. With the city surrounded and poorly defended from within, few could have imagined that the siege would turn out to be the longest in modern history. Although neighborhoods such as Grbavica and Ilita were taken by Serb forces early on, they never succeeded in capturing the city or splitting it in two. Thus, it is essential to explain how the city defended itself and survived the siege for three and a half years. The most obvious and common answer is international assistance. The United Nations directed a massive humanitarian relief aid effort. From the summer of 1992 until January 1996 there were 12,951 UN aid ﬂights into the city. The inﬂux of aid kept Sarajevo from starving (and also fed the besiegers who took a sizeable cut). The Serb leadership relinquished control of Sarajevo’s airport to the UN in June 1992, perhaps to preempt a more severe Western response. However, international intervention is only a limited part of the explanation for Sarajevo’s remarkable endurance. Relief aid was critical, but was far too little to fully sustain the city’s population.34 And militarily, the UN forces remained on the sidelines. Most importantly, the UN role cannot explain how the city survived and defended itself in the ﬁrst critical weeks and months of the siege (the most likely time for the city to fall), since the international presence was not fully established until the UN gained control of the airport. Access to clandestine ﬂows and utilization of criminal actors substantially explains how Sarajevo was both defended and fed. First, major players in Sarajevo’s criminal underground spearheaded the defense of the city, especially in the early stage of the siege. While also terrorizing and robbing local residents, many of these criminals turned-soldiers were embraced as war heroes for their leadership role in repelling the siege before a regular army was fully formed and mobilized. Second, a black-market trade soon emerged that crossed the siege lines, supplementing (at highly inﬂated prices) UN relief aid. Third, vital military equipment and supplies gradually ﬁltered into the city through various smuggling channels. Leading ﬁgures from Sarajevo’s criminal underground are widely credited with having saved the city during the earliest stage of the conﬂict.35 The main problem at the start of the war was not a lack of manpower, but rather lack of arms and the organization and coordination in setting up the initial defense of the city.36 Criminal gangs – teamed up, ironically, with local police forces – were armed and able to provide some initial semblance of cohesion in the absence of a formal military apparatus.37 This also had an important psychological effect, helping to generate a sense of optimism and deﬁance in the face of military encirclement. Jusuf Prazina (“Juka”) – one of the most important and 76

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controversial ﬁgures in the initial Sarajevo defense – was a thief and “debt collector” before the war.38 Although Juka had been in prison ﬁve times and was a major local underworld ﬁgure, the Bosnian government rewarded his initial military accomplishments by giving him the titles of Commander of the Special Forces of the Reserve Brigade of the Ministry of the Interior, and Commander of the Special Units of the Army.39 At the same time, as noted by a UN report, Juka’s men robbed, extorted, and abused civilians and looted warehouses and shops.40 Juka soon had a falling-out with the government, which issued a warrant for his arrest in October 1992. He was killed in Belgium in 1994, and his murder remains unresolved. Another leading criminal defender of the city was Ismet Bajramovic (“Celo”). Celo, who had been imprisoned for assault and robbery in Sarajevo before the war,41 was put in charge of the central prison, and successfully served as a high-ranking member in the Bosnian military police until the beginning of 1993. He helped to organize the defense of Dobrinja, a strategically vital Sarajevo neighbourhood near the airport, and led several important military police actions (including one against renegade soldiers who were abusing and robbing citizens) while at the same time he himself engaged in smuggling, racketeering, and cross-frontline trading.42 The Sarajevo government eventually turned against the criminal army gangs once they were no longer essential for the city’s defense. Their military utility gradually diminished with the formation of a professional army (ABiH), and the gangs were an obstacle to further army professionalization and consolidation. Their persistent refusal to integrate into the formal military command structure and their increasingly blatant law-breaking had become a serious challenge to government authority,43 and was embarrassing to Sarajevo’s leaders who needed to maintain international sympathy and support. In one incident, a senior Bosnian ofﬁcial pleaded with Juka’s men to clean up their act, telling them that French ofﬁcers were commenting that there is no Bosnian army but only smuggling gangs.44 As the former commander of the ABiH described the problem, there was a “thin line between patriotism and criminality, and some didn’t see the line as real.”45 In late October 1993 the government launched a day-long crackdown that paralysed the city, with ofﬁcials broadcasting stay-at-home warnings to local residents.46 Eighteen Bosnian army soldiers and policemen were killed, and hundreds of members of two army brigades were detained during the sweep (most of whom were later released). Government efforts to rein in the criminal gangs were welcomed in Sarajevo, but also generated mixed emotions. In an earlier court case bringing criminal charges against eleven soldiers, prosecutor Ismet Hamzic explained his unease: “Without these thugs, I wouldn’t even be here to talk about this case,” he said. “People like them stopped the Serbs.”47 Reining in the military thugs was a decisive move in establishing a more professional army.48 But while Sarajevo became less reliant on criminal gangs for its defense, the city continued to rely heavily on black marketeers for the 77

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provision of scarce goods such as food and fuel. This involved clandestine commercial collaboration across the front lines, often facilitated by criminal ties that transcended ethnic divisions. As one press report described it, “By day, Serbian gunmen in the suburb of Grbavica ﬁre mortars and sniper bullets into the Muslim held quarters of the city, and Muslim soldiers ﬁre back. At night, the two forces meet at the bridges spanning the Miljacka River, separating the Serbian and Muslim parts of the city, and conduct a thriving trade.”49 Blackmarket proﬁteering meant that the besiegers were supplying the besieged, which in turn helped to prolong the siege stalemate. A UN Commission of Experts reported that in late September 1993 Bosnian Serb forces held their ﬁre along those sections of the Sarajevo front line defended by Croat forces, and that the Serbs and Croats traded cigarettes and food.50 The Croat military units in Sarajevo were reportedly on good terms with their Serb counterparts, and often disapproved of Muslim raids across the line that provoked Serb shelling of Croat-held areas.51 Importantly, many humanitarian aid groups also doubled as smuggling fronts. The Sarajevo daily Osloboenje reported that more than 1,000 humanitarian aid organizations were registered in Sarajevo during the siege. Bojicic and Kaldor suggest that this high number can be explained in part by the fact that many small store owners engaged in black market trading were ofﬁcially registered as humanitarian organizations, which made it possible for them to obtain highly coveted government permits to exit and enter the city.52 The Ministry of Trade and Transportation controlled the allocation of permits to cross UN checkpoints, making it possible for the government to selectively subcontract out work that it could not do on its own. Some UN troops also earned side income by contributing to the city’s clandestine supply lines. The UN’s Ukrainian soldiers were especially notorious black marketeers, specializing in selling gas siphoned from their armored personnel carriers.53 Some Ukrainian military ofﬁcers reportedly even returned to Bosnia after the war to continue their role in the smuggling economy.54 Smuggling across the lines not only helped to sustain the Sarajevo population but also provided a trickle of arms and ammunition for the city’s military forces. During the ﬁrst phase of the war, for example, Chinese anti-tank launchers, known as “Red Arrows,” arrived via Pakistan and were carried across the airport tarmac on stretchers, disguised as wounded soldiers and wrapped cadavers. According to Bosnia’s top military commander during the war, these weapons were decisive in deterring Serb tank advances into the city.55 According to various accounts, UN forces were sometimes unwitting accomplices in smuggling operations. Kerim Lucˇarevic, a Bosnian military police commander between 1992 and 1993, describes various schemes to smuggle explosives into Sarajevo via United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) personnel and humanitarian aid packages.56 For example, during the summer of 1992, UNPROFOR troops were making regular deliveries of oxygen in metal cylinders to the local hospital. Thus, cylinders ﬁlled with 300 tons of gunpowder were mixed in with the oxygen shipments and brought into Sarajevo together with the regular 78

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UNPROFOR deliveries. The architect of the smuggling operation, Raif Dzˇigal, traveled to Zagreb (Croatia) to secure more ammunition, weapons, and oxygen cylinders, using “regular papers issued by the Ministry of Health of Bosnia and Herzegovina and came to an agreement with the World Health Organization to fund replacement cylinder valves, certifying, and ﬁlling them with oxygen and nitro-oxydol.” These cylinders were then ﬁlled with shells, launchers, and antiaircraft missiles and delivered to Sarajevo.57 But while such creative smuggling schemes helped the city endure the siege, it was not enough to break it. Ending the siege would have required heavy weaponry (such as artillery and tanks), which was the most difﬁcult to acquire on the black market and smuggle in.58 Thus, even as the city’s defenders managed to access enough clandestine weapons supplies to repel a Serb occupation or attempts to bisect the city, these were limited to only certain types of weapons. The result was to reinforce the siege stalemate – and thus a prolongation of the war. Unable to break through the siege above ground, an underground lifeline for the city was established in 1993 by digging a tunnel under the Sarajevo airport tarmac. The tunnel was made possible by the peculiar political geography of the siege. Sarajevo was surrounded on three sides by Serb forces, with the airport tarmac, which was controlled by the UN, as the only point where one could potentially enter or exit the city without directly crossing Serb lines. Bosnian government forces controlled the areas at each side of the tarmac (Butmir and Dobrinja), while the Serbs controlled areas at each end of the tarmac (Lukavica and Ilidzˇa). Dashing across the tarmac was extremely dangerous because of Serb sniper ﬁre. Moreover, as part of the bargain with the Bosnian Serb leadership for control of the airport, the UN agreed to stop individuals crossing the tarmac (thus, in order to supply humanitarian aid to Sarajevo via the airport, the UNPROFOR in effect had to help enforce the siege). The Sarajevo government’s solution was to bypass UN troops and the Serb snipers by going beneath the airport, digging an 800-meter-long tunnel under the tarmac that connected the Dobrinja and Butmir neighborhoods on the outskirts of Sarajevo. The secretive tunnel construction project created a lifeline that passed through the tunnel, exited south of the airport at Butmir, then on to the government-held outpost of Hrasnica, and from there across Mt. Igman to Bosnian-held towns on the Neretva River valley southwest of Sarajevo. From there, mountain roads could be used to reach Croatia and the Adriatic coast. An average of 4,000 people and 20 tons of material went through the tunnel every day. Eventually, a pipeline was also put in to pump diesel fuel to Sarajevo.59 UN ofﬁcials behaved as if the tunnel did not exist, and ignored Serb demands that they try to close it. Access to the tunnel, which opened in late July 1993, was at ﬁrst largely restricted to military purposes. However, the rules were soon loosened, allowing the tunnel to be used to bring in food and other goods.60 A document of the UN’s World Food Program noted the importance of the tunnel: “Prices have not risen inordinately during the current suspension of the 79

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convoys and airlift – probably due to the uninterrupted use of the tunnel under the airport as a local route.”61 Controlled by the 1st Corps of the Bosnian Army, the tunnel soon became a lucrative business. In the words of the Bosnian family whose house was at the entrance of the tunnel: “May the commanders remember that they have gotten rich by smuggling through our house.”62 The army reportedly claimed 30 percent of all that was transported into Sarajevo via the tunnel, with payment in cash or kind.63 The Sarajevo government strictly regulated who could leave the city through the tunnel. This was partly due to the tunnel’s limited capacity and high trafﬁc volume, but the government also had a strategic interest in keeping a critical population mass. Maintaining a large population base was essential to assure high levels of international attention and sympathy. Individuals apprehended trying to leave without authorization faced prison terms.64 Thus, while the clandestine ﬂow of arms, ammunition, food, fuel, and other supplies into the city helped to keep the city defended and fed, the clandestine ﬂow of people out of the city was strictly controlled. Ironically, Serb snipers, roadblocks, and UN forces at the airport in effect helped to enforce the government’s exit restrictions. Sustaining the war by trading with the enemy Throughout Bosnia the proliferation of clandestine trading across front lines helped to sustain the war.65 The checkered military map of Bosnia determined what areas became black-market trading posts. Instead of a continuous military front line, there were confrontation lines inside and surrounding strategically located urban areas (often UN designated “safe areas”) and the transportation routes that connected them. The ﬁghting factions were partly interspersed, with signiﬁcant local variation in relations across the lines.66 For example, near Sarajevo, the Serb-held suburb of Ilidzˇa was next to the Croat-held town of Kiseljak. Both proﬁted immensely from black marketeering, especially in the petrol trade. A leading petrol trader on the Serb side was the brother of Momcilo Krajisˇnik, head of the Bosnian Serb assembly, who reportedly made a fortune by purchasing fuel from Croats for the Bosnian Serb army.67 Kiseljak supplied both Serb and Bosnian government forces, and each side quietly ignored the clandestine practice they beneﬁted from. The town was also a favorite source of fuel and other supplies for UN personnel and foreign journalists.68 Kiseljak was located at the western gates of Sarajevo – strategically the most obvious place to militarily break the siege from the outside, since this is where the Serb ring around the city was weakest. However, massive black marketeering gave Kiseljak’s Croats a clear ﬁnancial self-interest in keeping the siege going.69 The Bihac pocket in northern Bosnia near the Croatian border was an especially active wartime commercial hub. Arms, fuel, food, and other goods crossed front lines via Bihac. According to the commander of the Croatian Defense Council (HVO) detachment in Bihac, “Our arms come from various sources. We 80

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make some, we steal some, and buy some from the Serbs themselves”.70 Remarkably, Bosnian Serbs had sold the 5th Corps of the ABiH a large quantity of the weapons that were then used to attack them. Senior Serb ofﬁcers had reportedly sold arms and ammunition to the 5th Corps (Lieutenant-Colonel Milovan Milutinovic, a Bosnian Serb Army spokesman, later acknowledged this). Some sources claim that the ABiH 5th Corps bought up to sixty truckloads of weapons from the Serbs.71 The clandestine economy of the Bihac area was also at the heart of the political division between the central government in Sarajevo and local warlord Fikret Abdic.72 Abdic, a prominent Muslim businessman and head of the giant food-processing company Agrokomerc, ran the Bihac pocket from the town of Velika Kladusˇa. Abdic, who in the 1980s had been jailed on corruption charges and was sought by the Austrian police for fraud, openly broke away from the Muslim-led government in 1993 and declared the region the “autonomous province of Western Bosnia.” He ran it as his own private ﬁefdom, making lucrative trade agreements with all sides, and collecting taxes and transit fees on goods passing through the enclave.73 He processed food for Krajina Serbs, and purchased fuel and other supplies from Croats that were ofﬁcially destined only for his province but that were then quietly shipped on to Serbia, and to Croats and Serbs in Bosnia.74 Abdic’s chief aide described Bihac’s role: “We see ourselves as the Cayman Islands of the Balkans.” He emphasized that “[w]e are interested in business, ﬁnance, making money.”75 Abdic was put out of business in August 1994, when he and thousands of his followers were driven from the area by the Bosnian 5th Corps. While the war was good business for the well-connected, in some places it was also eroding troop morale.76 Growing anger and resentment over the accumulation of illicit war fortunes became evident on 10 September 1993 when two brigades of the Bosnian Serb army in Banja Luka mutinied, took control of public buildings, and demanded the arrest of local “war proﬁteers.” In a collective protest letter, they charged that “while we ﬁght . . . slick manipulators lead a comfortable and fashionable life at the rear – with the blessing of the ruling power, amassing their fortunes and implementing their dark political designs.”77 According to Bougarel, the Banja Luka mutiny illuminated not only certain clandestine economic aspects of the war but a growing motivational crisis among the combatants and a polarization between a minority of war proﬁteers and a majority of the population.78

The termination of war As has been well documented elsewhere, a variety of domestic and international factors helped to ﬁnally bring about an end to the war in Bosnia, including much greater U.S. diplomatic engagement and pressure, NATO air strikes, and increasingly strained relations between Belgrade and the Bosnian Serb leadership.79 But a shift in the military balance on the ground – made possible by 81

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heightened Bosnian government access to clandestine arms supplies – was an essential ingredient in creating the necessary conditions for a negotiated settlement. As the retired Croatian army general Martin Sˇpegelj has argued, “What was ﬁnally decisive in ending the war was the emergence, to general astonishment, of a strong army of Bosnia-Herzegovina. It foiled plans to divide the republic, which was a great surprise to both the Croatian and Serbian leaderships.”80 With the informal blessing of the United States,81 a major part of the Bosnian military’s unexpected strength was enhanced access to clandestinely imported weapons supplies. In this sense, ironically, it was the very failure of the international arms embargo through smuggling that helped to bring the war to an end. Shifting the military balance by evading the arms embargo In September 1991, the United Nations declared an arms embargo on Yugoslavia and its constituent parts. Virtually self-sufﬁcient militarily, Serbia was the least vulnerable to the arms embargo. The Bosnian Serbs, aided by the armaments left behind when the JNA formally withdrew and by clandestine supply lines to neighboring Serbia, were also minimally affected by the arms embargo. The Bosnian government, on the other hand, entered the war poorly armed and geographically handicapped. Almost all weapons imported into the landlocked country had to be transported through Croatian territory. The arms embargo made an already difﬁcult situation even more so. Accessing external arms supplies would have to be done covertly, which included paying exorbitant taxes in the form of Croatian transit fees (the standard transshipment fee was about 30 percent, with payment in kind).82 Equally important, dependence on the black market also limited the types of equipment available, since heavy weaponry, such as armor and artillery, was particularly cumbersome for smuggling.83 A key broker for black-market weapons deals for the Bosnian government was an obscure organization called the Third World Relief Agency (TWRA). The TWRA was used as a front to funnel $350 million to the Bosnian government between 1992 and 1995, at least half of which was apparently used to purchase and smuggle weapons.84 Most of the money allegedly came from Middle East countries, including Iran, Sudan, and especially Saudi Arabia. Donations also came from Turkey, Brunei, Malaysia, and Pakistan.85 Headquartered in Vienna, the agency had ofﬁces in Sarajevo, Budapest, Moscow, and Istanbul. Hasan Cengic, the lead Bosnian government ofﬁcial charged with negotiating clandestine arms deals, was on the advisory board of the TWRA. In a major smuggling operation funded by the TWRA in September 1992, Soviet-built cargo planes landed in Maribor, Slovenia, from Khartoum, Sudan. The cargo – 120 tons of assault riﬂes, mortars, mines, and ammunition originally from surplus stocks of Soviet weapons in Eastern Germany – was labeled humanitarian aid. From Maribor, the weapons were transported by chartered Russian heli82

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copters to Tuzla and Zenica in Bosnia, stopping at the Croatian port of Split to refuel. Another operation reportedly involved $15 million in light weaponry, smuggled into Bosnia from Croatia via Malaysian and Turkish UNPROFOR troops. In 1996, the Bosnian government awarded the TWRA a gold medal for its “relief work.”86 The TWRA’s operations predated the opening of a direct arms smuggling channel between Iran and Bosnia (via Croatia) in May 1995. After the U.S. brokered Croat–Bosnia federation in 1994 it became signiﬁcantly less difﬁcult to smuggle weapons in via Croatian territory. At an 28 April 1994 meeting with U.S. Ambassador Peter Galbraith, Croatian president Tuman inquired about the U.S. stance on the Iran–Bosnia smuggling pipeline. Galbraith replied that he had “no instructions” from Washington on the matter, which was interpreted as tacit approval. Air shipments of arms and ammunition reportedly averaged eight per month, with 30 percent taken by Croatia as a transshipment fee. According to CIA estimates, arms shipments to Bosnia from Iran reached approximately 14,000 tons, worth about $150–$200 million.87 Despite the Bosnian government’s growing capacity to smuggle in arms, dependence on black market channels nevertheless had signiﬁcant limitations and drawbacks. As the New York Times editorialized in November 1994: Even though Bosnia is now smuggling in enough weapons to turn the tide, formally lifting the embargo is important because it would allow in the tanks and other heavy weapons the Government’s side still lacks. It would also give Bosnia’s political authorities more control over which units get the new arms . . . A procurement system based on smuggling directs arms to those commanders who have the best underworld connections. Lifting the embargo would also free Bosnia from reliance on radical weapons suppliers like Iran and Libya that have few inhibitions about circumventing UN rules.88 Nevertheless, those who argued that the embargo should be lifted to “level the playing ﬁeld” were opposed by those who thought that this would simply “level the killing ﬁeld,” escalating the conﬂict. The stalemated international politics of the embargo – with Russia and major European powers supporting and the United States increasingly opposing it – meant that the embargo remained in place even as Washington ofﬁcials progressively encouraged evasion. While avoiding the diplomatically risky move of unilaterally lifting the embargo, the Clinton administration adopted a de facto policy of not only nonenforcement (i.e. turning a blind eye) but also covert facilitation in arming the Bosnian government.89 The clandestine channelling of arms to Bosnia from Islamic countries was facilitated by the fact that the UN depended on U.S. intelligence to monitor the embargo.90 With the U.S. brokered Croat–Muslim alliance of convenience and a rising inﬂux of smuggled weapons, the military balance decisively shifted in 83

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1994–1995. “Time is on Bosnia’s side,” remarked a military insider who participated in a smuggling scheme that shipped 200 tons of Chinese weapons via Croatia to Bosnia in the summer of 1994. “With further similar transactions, one day Bosnia will take the war to the Serbs.”91 Indeed, in coordination with Croatian forces, the Bosnian army went on the offensive the following year, quickly regaining large swaths of territory lost at the beginning of the war. On the defensive for the ﬁrst time and with little prospect of turning the tide, the strategic calculus of the Bosnian Serb leadership shifted, creating space for a ﬁnal negotiated solution.92

The aftermath of war The legacy of criminalized conﬂict in Bosnia has profoundly shaped the postconﬂict reconstruction process.93 The smuggling networks that proved so essential to the Bosnia war effort have at the same time contributed to the criminalization of the state and economy in the post-war period. Crime-ﬁghting problems now overshadow war-ﬁghting problems. Key players in the covert acquisition and distribution of supplies during wartime have emerged as a nouveau riche “criminal elite” with close ties to the government and nationalist political parties. In January 2000, the U.S. Special Representative to Bosnia told the Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee of the Council of Europe that “[w]ar-time underground networks have turned into [political] criminal networks involved in massive smuggling, tax evasion, and trafﬁcking in women and stolen cars.”94 While the emergence of new elites has been part of the transition process throughout post-Communist Eastern Europe,95 in Bosnia the process is distinct in that it was dramatically accelerated by and took place under conditions of criminalized warfare. As University of Sarajevo law professor Zdravko Grebo puts it, while new elite formation during transitions elsewhere have taken years and even decades, in Bosnia it has happened overnight, with small fortunes made during the war by simply smuggling in a shipment of cigarettes or oil.96 In contrast to East Central Europe where the old nomenklatura/political elite converted political capital into economic (and sometimes criminal) capital, in the case of Bosnia, criminal capital accumulated during a criminalized war has been converted to political capital after the war.97 In Sarajevo, for example, the city’s social structure has been turned upside down: at the same time as many of the most educated professional technocrats have ﬂed abroad, many who were previously on the margins of society have experienced rapid upward mobility thanks to their wartime roles and political connections. The daily Sarajevo newspaper, Osloboenje, lamented during the siege that “before our eyes, the new class is being born in this war, the class of those who got rich overnight, all former ‘marginals’.”98 An enduring legacy of the war has been the criminalization of the city, as power and inﬂuence shifted during wartime to those most connected in the shadowy world of clandestine transactions.99 Entrenched political corruption – based on close relationships of 84

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loyalty and trust between nationalist politicians, the security apparatus, and criminals that were forged during war – has undermined the rebuilding of the city, eroded public trust in government, and impeded democratic reform.100 Moreover, local war proﬁteers, including many politicians and military commanders, are now shielded from prosecution thanks to a sweeping amnesty law. When the international community demanded an amnesty law for draft dodgers and deserters, Bosnian politicians opportunistically expanded the amnesty to include such crimes as illegal commerce, tax evasion, and illegal use of humanitarian aid. The time period covered by the amnesty was between January 1991 and 22 December 1995. The starting date, more than a year before the outbreak of the Bosnian war, closely corresponds to when nationalist political parties (SDA, HDZ, and SDS) gained power. Some of the politicians who pushed for the amnesty law had investigations and indictments against them pending.101 War entrepreneurs have been well positioned to take advantage of the privatization and deregulation process promoted by international ﬁnancial institutions as a condition for continued aid.102 Some of those who proﬁted the most from war have successfully “cleaned” their wealth, and now present themselves as legitimate economic elites. For example, the Bosnian wartime deputy Minister of Defense, Hasan Cengic, lived modestly before the war as an Islamic clergyman but is now part of an expansive family-run regional economic empire. For highly placed logisticians such as Cengic, the covert nature of importing arms and soliciting clandestine external ﬁnancial support from Islamic countries provided an ideal cover for corruption and proﬁteering.103 In his wartime diary, retired Bosnian army general Sˇiber notes that Cengic was called “the money God.”104 On the Bosnian Serb side, Momcˇilo Mandic (a deputy minister for the Bosnian MUP shortly before the war, who lived on a moderate civil servant salary) emerged from the war as one of the wealthiest men in the region, and is believed to be one of the primary sources of funding for Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzˇic.105 Apparently, Mandic’s initial wealth was created by stealing from the Sarajevo MUP treasury (150,000 Deutschmark) shortly before the war started, was expanded by the wartime robbery of warehouses and manipulation of humanitarian aid, and was then completed with his dominant position in oil smuggling, banking, and ﬁctitious loan schemes in Republika Srpska.106 Mandic also illegally removed and later sold thousands of blank Bosnian identity papers, such as driver’s licenses and passports (Bosnian identity papers were highly valued commodities during the war because they provided refugee beneﬁts to their carriers and often led to a refugee or immigration visa to a Western country). Mandic’s political positions (as a deputy Minister of the Interior and then Justice Minister in the wartime Bosnian Serb leadership) provided an ideal cover for the accumulation of illicit wealth. While the formal, above-ground economy has struggled to recover from the war and has been highly dependent on external donor support (some $5.5 billion since 1996), the informal, underground economy is thriving.107 Clandestine eco85

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nomic activity has generated substantial revenue and employment, becoming a key part of the survival strategy for many impoverished Bosnians in the face of bleak conditions.108 However, the clandestine economy has also been an obstacle to creating effective state institutions and establishment of the rule of law. Much of the country’s imports arrive in the form of contraband, which provides consumer goods at a discount but enriches smuggling organizations and deprives the government of desperately needed tax revenue.109 The highly fractured and fragmented nature of the Bosnian state that emerged from the Dayton Agreement (based on two formal entities, the Federation and the Republika Srpska, and many local cantons) has invited rent-seeking and made border controls and collection of customs duties extremely cumbersome and difﬁcult. Partly as a legacy of the war, Bosnia has also become a major human cargo transshipment point for illegal entry into the European Union (EU). The routing of thousands of Iranian migrants through Sarajevo has been a direct consequence of the close wartime ties between Bosnia and Iran.110 Until December 2000 Iranian passport holders did not need a visa to enter Bosnia because the Sarajevo government was grateful to Iran for its assistance during the war. Chartered ﬂights from Tehran regularly landed at the Sarajevo airport and returned virtually empty. Pressured by the EU, the Bosnian government has imposed a visa requirement on Iran, but the country continues to be a major migrant smuggling hub.111 The UN mission in Bosnia reports that the Bosnia route is taken by about 10 percent of the smuggled illegal migrants entering Western Europe.112 Even more proﬁtable than migrant smuggling has been the trafﬁcking of women into the region, where a core part of the customer base is the substantial international community presence (including thousands of NATO troops).113 The transformation of the clandestine war economy into a post-war criminalized economy is nowhere more visible than at the so-called Arizona market; an area that was once a NATO-enforced “zone of separation” and checkpoint between Serb, Muslim, and Croat forces that has grown into a massive complex of about 2,000 plywood and steel shacks covering about thirty-ﬁve acres. Some 20,000 people reportedly owe their livelihoods to the Arizona market (named for NATO’s designation of an adjacent highway).114 A large sign reads “Our thanks to the U.S. Army for supporting the development of this market.”115 Western ofﬁcials promoted the site as a way to nurture local entrepreneurship, and the Pentagon provided around $40,000 of the start-up costs. The thriving market, however, quickly became a smuggler’s paradise, where one could ﬁnd among other, common-use goods, untaxed cigarettes and alcohol, illegal drugs, stolen cars, and guns. It therefore turned into a glaring symbol of the government’s inability to regulate the ﬂow of goods across its borders. By 1999, as many as 25,000 shoppers were visiting the market on a single weekend, with the state losing an estimated $30 million in tax revenue every year from goods sold at the market.116 The market became a hub for trafﬁckers bringing in unauthorized immigrants, prostitutes, and drugs from Asia and the former Soviet bloc to the European Union.117 In 1999, Jacques Klein, the then head of the UN mission to 86

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Bosnia, charged that the market was run by hardline obstructionists opposed to ethnic integration, and urged that the entire area be bulldozed.118 Unable or unwilling to dismantle the sprawling market, in 2000 the Ofﬁce of the High Representative launched an ambitious campaign to clean up and regulate it, with mixed results so far.119 The market is considered a success story by some observers, since Serbs, Croats, and Muslims now interact peacefully through trade in a place that once was bitterly contested. Half of the market is located in the Muslim–Croat federation, and the other half in the Republika Srpska. While Western ofﬁcials promote the classic liberal argument that peace can be fostered through trade and economic interdependence, it remains to be seen whether durable peace can also come through illegal trade and clandestine economic interdependence.

Extensions While the limitations of a single case make it difﬁcult to evaluate the argument more rigorously, and a systematic comparison across cases is beyond the scope of this study, some analytical insights can nevertheless be gained by brieﬂy extending the focus elsewhere in the region. In Croatia, for example, geographic advantage (sympathetic immediate neighbors and a long and accessible coastline), an afﬂuent and well-organized diaspora community, and access to local and neighboring military stockpiles help to explain why Croatia was far more successful than the Bosnian government in its clandestine arming effort against Serb forces. For example, Croatian army general Martin Sˇpegelj covertly imported small arms from Hungary in 1990 for the expanding Croatian police forces, and was able to seize local JNA weapons stocks without great difﬁculty in the fall of 1991. These seizures included about 100 tanks and 400 pieces of heavy artillery equipment.120 But even while Croatia was better positioned than Bosnia to covertly access weapons supplies, the clandestine procurement process to sidestep the arms embargo nevertheless fueled corruption and ofﬁcial tolerance for criminality. As a former Croat soldier who had been involved in an illegal weapons import scheme has described it, the arms embargo had the perverse consequence of making smuggling seem patriotic and nurtured state tolerance for illegal activity.121 Moreover, there has been little accounting for the inﬂux of funds from diaspora war donations. Variation in access to clandestine ﬂows also helps to explain variation in the timing of the conﬂicts in the region. Based on levels of ethnic tension alone, one would expect Kosovo to have been the ﬁrst powder keg to explode in the former Yugoslavia. An initial lack of access to arms is an essential part of the explanation for why the ethnic Albanian push for independence took place considerably later than the conﬂicts in Croatia and Bosnia. A sharp rise in the availability of cheap smuggled weapons – due to the collapse of the neighboring Albanian government and the looting of armories in the spring of 1997 – was a prerequisite for escalation in the armed confrontations between members of the Kosovo 87

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Liberation Army (KLA) and Serb forces.122 The KLA also beneﬁted from the substantial and well-organized remittances from ethnic Albanians living abroad, part of which likely included the proﬁts of criminal activities in Western Europe such as heroin trafﬁcking.123 Moreover, the more recent outbreak of conﬂict in Macedonia between the Macedonian state and the Albanian-led National Liberation Army (NLA) has been closely connected to cross-border crime, including the smuggling of arms and other contraband.124 Indeed, some observers have argued that the conﬂict has not simply been about ethnic disputes but about maintaining and controlling smuggling routes.125 In this regard, it is important to point out that the outbreak of armed conﬂict in Macedonia started in Tanusˇevci, a remote smuggling village bordering Kosovo, when Macedonian soldiers attempted to impose border controls.126 Neighboring Serbia is also struggling to cope with the after-effects of the criminalized dimensions of conﬂict in the region, most dramatically illustrated by the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Dinic, on 12 March 2003. The main suspects are Milorad Lukovic (“Legija”) and his so-called Zemun clan, a well-know Belgrade criminal group specializing in the smuggling of drugs, cigarettes, and oil, and the person whom Western governments had been pushing Dinic to crack down on. The existence of the Zemun group was ﬁrst formally acknowledged in 2001 when Serbian police published a report claiming that there were ﬁfty active criminal groups in the country, with the Zemun group considered the most powerful. Lukovic had denounced Dinic as unpatriotic for his cooperation with the Hague war crimes tribunals.127 The power of Lukovic and his associates can be traced back to the Milosˇevic era, when crime, business, and the state security apparatus became closely integrated in the effort to evade international sanctions, foster illicit business, and support the war efforts of the 1990s. Milosˇevic nurtured a symbiotic relationship between the state and organized crime – a relationship that has outlasted the wars and Milosˇevic. Lukovic, an ex-French foreign legionnaire and former commander of the “Red Berets” special unit within the Serbian MUP, had retired from state service into criminal enterprise full time while retaining close ties to the security establishment. Dinic’s rise to power and removal of Milosˇevic was assisted by Lukovic and Belgrade’s criminal underworld. Indeed, Lukovic’s troops even helped in June 2001 with Milosˇevic’s deportation.128 The country’s crime groups, having abandoned their former patron and sided with Dinic, had essentially been given an amnesty after Milosˇevic’s capture and extradition. However, facing mounting pressure from the international community and pragmatically accepting the need for reform to gain desperately needed foreign aid, Dinic had recently moved against organized crime – including some of the very people who had helped him gain power. Breaking the tacit amnesty, it appears, cost him his life, sparking a new political crisis in Serbia.129 (According to some press reports after the assassination, Lukovic ﬂed to Bosnia, hiding in western Herzegovina at the home of his Croatian friend Ante Gotovina – a former Croatian general also wanted by the Hague war crimes tribunal and who 88

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knew Lukovic from their pre-war days together in the French Foreign Legion).130 Unravelling the entrenched ties between the state security apparatus and criminal enterprise in Serbia will be a daunting task for Dinic’s successors. And it is questionable whether there is sufﬁcient political will to push forward with the decriminalization of the state.131 The European Union increasingly views Serbia and Montenegro, and the Western Balkans in general, as an organized crime gateway to Europe.

Conclusion In this article I have emphasized the explanatory utility of placing criminal actors and smuggling practices front and center in the study of armed conﬂict and its aftermath. Drawing from the Bosnia experience, I have suggested that a “bottom up” approach to understanding the dynamics of war and peace provides analytical insights that are missing or underexplored in more conventional accounts. While a case study obviously has inherent explanatory limitations, the multiple dimensions of criminalized conﬂict in Bosnia offer some important lessons that are relevant to the study and management of conﬂict and postconﬂict reconstruction in general. Perhaps most importantly, the Bosnia case not only suggests the need to pay greater attention to the criminalized aspects of conﬂict but to do so in a manner that recognizes its considerable ambiguity, complexity, and double-edged character. This leads to some rather awkward and even unsettling conclusions. Smuggling and criminal actors can contribute to the outbreak and persistence of war, but also to its conclusion. Smuggling and criminal actors can contribute to the looting of the country, but also to its survival. A clandestine weapons procurement system invites corruption and rewards those with the best criminal connections, but it can nevertheless be vital to the defense effort. Smuggling and criminal actors can stymie and complicate international conﬂict resolution initiatives, but international interventions can also fuel smuggling and enrich criminals. Post-war reconstruction is hindered and distorted by a criminalized smuggling economy, but such clandestine commerce is also an essential survival strategy for many people in the face of dire economic conditions. These paradoxical and contradictory aspects of the criminalized side of conﬂict will continue to pose a challenge to analysts and policy practitioners, given that in some form and to some degree, they are evident not only in Bosnia but in many other war-torn places across the globe. Rather than simply condemning or ignoring the criminalized dimensions of conﬂict, we need a deeper and more complex understanding of it. The Bosnia case also provides a powerful illustration of why scholars need to pay attention not only to why wars start, persist, and end, but also to the profound effects that the criminalized aspects of conﬂict can have on the post-war social order. While the physical scars of war are the most visible, the social repercussions may be more consequential. War, in short, can be a highly 89

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effective mechanism for criminalized social advancement. Another crucial lesson of the Bosnia experience is the importance of taking much greater account of the role of international intervention in the criminalization of a conﬂict. Although scholars have increasingly focused on the role of international intervention in resolving intrastate conﬂict, remarkably little attention has been given to how such intervention can (often unintentionally) become part of the clandestine political economy of the conﬂict. Also related to international intervention, the Bosnia case provides a sobering lesson of how humanitarian aid and peacekeeping efforts can become deeply enmeshed in the criminalized aspects of a war.

Notes 1 This chapter originally appeared in extended form under the same title in International Studies Quarterly 24 (2004), pp. 29–51. 2 M. Brown (ed.), The International Dimensions of Internal Conﬂict, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996; K. J. Holsti, The State, War, and the State of War, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 3 D. Keen, The Economic Functions of Violence in Civil Wars, Adelphi Paper 320, London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1998; M. Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999; M. Berdal and D. M. Malone (eds), Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000; M. Dufﬁeld, Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security, London: Zed Books, 2001; D. Jung (ed.), Shadow Globalization, Ethnic Conﬂicts, and New Wars: A Political Economy of Intrastate Wars, London: Routledge, 2003. 4 R. T. Naylor, Patriots and Proﬁteers: On Economic Warfare, Embargo Busting, and State Sponsored Crime, Toronto: McLelland and Stewart, 1999. 5 The author conducted forty-ﬁve semi-structured interviews with key informants in Bosnia and Croatia, including former senior military leaders, in June 2001 and June and July 2002. The research also included systematic review of local and international media reporting, ofﬁcial testimonies and reports, and published war diaries and memoirs of leading actors. 6 S. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995. 7 V. P. Gagnon, “Ethnic Nationalism and International Conﬂict: The Case of Serbia,” International Security, 19 (1994), pp. 130–166. 8 C. Shierup, Scramble for the Balkans, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. 9 Exceptions include S. L. Burg and P. S. Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic Conﬂict and International Intervention, Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999, and B. Magasˇ and I. Zˇanic (eds), The War in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1991–1995, London: Frank Cass, 2001. 10 Holsti, The State, War, and the State of War, p. 132. 11 N. Cigar, The Right to Defence: Thoughts on the Bosnian Arms Embargo, London: Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies, 1995. 12 L. Silber and A. Little, Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation, New York: Penguin, 1997, p. 218. In January 1992, Milosˇevic secretly ordered that all Bosnia-born Serb JNA ofﬁcers be transferred back to Bosnia. 13 The failure to prepare for the war and lack of weapons and supplies were repeatedly 90

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14

15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22

23

24 25

26 27 28 29 30 31

32 33 34

emphasized by former senior ABiH (Bosnian army) military leaders in interviews with the author in Sarajevo, July 2002. See, for example, Adnan Buturovic and Filip Sˇvarm, “Ustanak u Kninu i Pokolj u Zvorniku” (“The Knin Uprising and the Zvornik Slaughter”), Slobodna Bosna (Sarajevo), 20 April 1997, and Dejan Anastasijevic, “Lik i Delo: Franko Simatovic Frenki” (“The Life and Times: Franko Simatovic-Frenki”), Vreme (Belgrade), 29 March 2001, p. 34. T. Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000, p. 170. M. Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia, New York: Penguin Books. 1996, p. 150. Burg and Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina, p. 130. J. Udovicki and Stitkovac, “Bosnia and Herzegovina: The Second War,” p. 185, in J. Udovicki and J. Ridgeway (eds), Burn this House: The Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia, pp. 175–216. T. Judah, The Serbs: History, Myth, and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998, p. 194. D. Cortright and G. Lopez, The Sanctions Decade, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000, p. 65. Cited in Burg and Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina, p. 78. James Ron, “Boundaries and Violence: Patterns of State Action along the Bosnia–Yugoslavia Divide,” Theory and Society 29, pp. 609–647; and “Territoriality and Plausible Deniability,” chapter in B. B. Campbell and A. B. Brenner (eds), Death Squads in Global Perspective: Murder with Deniability, New York: St. Martin’s Press, pp. 287–313. United Nations Security Council Commission Of Experts (1994) Final Report of the United Nations Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780 (1992). Available at: http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/comexpert/ANX/ Annex III: The military structure, strategy and tactics of the warring factions. Annex III.A: Special Forces (28 December 1994). Annex IV: The Policy of Ethnic Cleansing (28 December 1994). Annex VI: Study of the Battle and Siege of Sarajevo (27 May 1994). (UN Experts, 1994: Annex IV.) James Ron, “Territoriality and Plausible Deniability,” pp. 287–313. Filip Sˇvarm, “Borba do Poslednje Pljacke” (“Fight Until the Last Robbery”), Vreme (Belgrade), 8 March 1993, pp. 28–31; and Lana Petosˇevic, “Bio sam Srpski Placenik” (“I was a Serbian Mercenary”), Vreme (Belgrade), 5 October 1992, pp. 30–31. UN Commisssion of Experts, Annex III.A. Ron, “Territoriality and Plausible Deniability,” p. 299. Ibid., pp. 300–301. Kaldor, New and Old Wars, 53. U. Komlenovic, “State and Maﬁa in Yugoslavia,” East European Constitutional Review, 6 (1997), pp. 70–73. See “Special Dossier: Arkan,” Vreme (Belgrade), 22 January 2000, pp. 11–21 (Part I) and 29 January 2000, pp. 8–13 (Part II); and UN Commission of Experts Final Report (1994: Annex III.A). Cited in UN Experts, 1994: Annex III.A. Ibid. It is estimated that the UN supplied an average of 159 grams (about 0.35 lbs.) of food per person per day in Sarajevo during the siege. Vildana Selimbegovic, “Abeceda Opsade” (“The Siege Alphabet”), DANI (Sarajevo), 5 April 2002, pp. 20–24. In early 1993, the weekly humanitarian ration was only 870 grams per 91

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35 36 37 38 39 40 41

42

43

44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

person, which is sufﬁcient for only a day and a half of basic sustenance. “Nikad Manje Hrane” (“Never Less Food”), Osloboenje (Sarajevo), 5 May 1993, p. 5. For brief proﬁles see Vildana Selimbegovic, “Heroji Koje su Pojeli Skakavci” (“Heroes Eaten by Locust”), DANI (Sarajevo), 31 December 1994, pp. 54–57. For example, in May 1992 the government had some 35,000 volunteers in Sarajevo, but only 8,000 riﬂes to give them. Author interview with retired ABiH general Jovan Divjak, 11 July 2002. Author interview with retired ABiH general Stjepan Sˇiber, Sarajevo, 17 July 2002. UN Experts, 1994: Annex III.A; P. Maass, Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War, London: Papermac, 1996, p. 31. On Juka’s wartime activities, see the four-part series in the Sarajevo weekly DANI, 31 May; 6 June; 13 June; and 20 June 2002 (available at www.bhdani.com). UN Experts, 1994: Annex III.A. “I put Ismet [Celo] in jail during peacetime, and during the trial the court found he was a psychopath,” noted Jusuf Pusˇina, then a Bosnian interior minister. “Then,” during wartime, “suddenly I found he had more authority than me. It was a surreal moment.” Quoted in John Pomfret, “Murderers or War Heroes?” Washington Post, 14 May 1993, p. A34. See Mladen Sancanin, “Interview with Ismet Bajramovic Celo,” DANI (Sarajevo), 10 March 1993, pp. 17–19; Vildana Selimbegovic, “Celo je pod Mojom Komandom bio Pozitivac” (“Under my Command, Celo was a Good Guy”), DANI (Sarajevo), 9 June 2000; and John F. Burns, “Gangs in Sarajevo Worry Diplomats,” New York Times, 4 October 1993, p. A3. See the 1992 and 1993 war diaries of General Sˇiber, Prevare, Zablude, Istina: Ratni Dnevnik 1992 (“Deceptions, Misconceptions, the Truth: War Diary 1992”), Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina: Rabic, 2000; and Prevare, Zablude, Istina: Ratni Dnevnik 1993 (“Deceptions, Misconceptions, the Truth: War Diary 1993”), Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina: Rabic, 2001. At the same time, there were claims that the commander of the French battalion was engaged in smuggling through the Sarajevo airport. See Sˇiber, War Diary 1992, pp. 175–177, 203. Author interview with retired ABiH General Delic, Sarajevo, 8 July 2002. On details of “Action Trebevic,” see Petar Finci, “Dosije: Borba Protiv Kriminala” (“Dossier: The Fight against the Crime”), DANI (Sarajevo), 29 December 1993, pp. 20–23. John Pomfret, “Murderers or War Heroes?” M. Vasic, “The Yugoslav Army and the Post-Yugoslav Armies,” in D. A. Dyker and I. Vejvoda (eds), Yugoslavia and After, New York: Addison-Wesley Longman, 1996, pp. 116–138. Burns, “Gangs in Sarajevo Worry Diplomats.” UN Experts, 1994: Annex III. Burg and Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina, p. 139. V. Bojicˇic and M. Kaldor (1999) “The Abnormal Economy of Bosnia-Herzegovina,” in C. Schierup (ed.), Scramble for the Balkans, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999, pp. 92–118. Maass, Love Thy Neighbor, p. 154. Sandra Ibrahimovic, “Welcome to Marlboro Country,” DANI (Sarajevo), 22 November 1998, pp. 38–39. Author interview with retired ABiH General Delic, former ABiH chief of staff, Sarajevo, 8 July 2002. See also Vildana Selimbegovic, “Oruzˇje na Sluzˇbenom Putu” (“When Weapons were Away on Business”), DANI (Sarajevo), 17 May 2002, pp. 18–20.

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56 K. Lucˇarevic, The Battle for Sarajevo, Sarajevo: TZU, 2000, pp. 230–231. 57 Ibid. 58 Author interview with retired ABiH General Divjak, 11 July 2002, and with retired ABiH General Sˇiber, 17 July 2002. 59 Edis Kolar and Bajro Kolar, The Sarajevo War Tunnel, Sarajevo, n.d., pp. 8–11. 60 For estimates of tunnel trafﬁc see ABiH Brigadier General Ajnadzˇic’s account, N. Ajnadzˇic, Odbrana Sarajeva (“The Defense of Sarajevo”), Sarajevo, BosniaHerzegovina: Sedam, 2002. 61 Quoted in Moritz Doebler, “Underground Tunnel a Lifeline for Besieged Sarajevo,” Ottawa Citizen, 26 December 1994, p. B2. 62 Nidzˇara Ahmetasˇevic, “Sarajevski Tunel – Kuca Kolarovih” (“Sarajevo Tunnel – The Kolar House”), Slobodna Bosna (Sarajevo), 10 July 1999, p. 28. 63 John Pomfret, “Steps to Ease Sarajevo Hasten Its Partition; Government Finds Way around Serbs to Secure Supplies,” Washington Post, 7 January 1995, p. A4. 64 Burg and Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina, p. 177. 65 The practice of trading with the enemy during wartime is an old one, but remains under studied. See J. Levy and K. Barbieri, “Trading with the Enemy During Wartime: Theoretical Explanations and Historical Evidence,” paper prepared for presentation at the 2000 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C. 31 August–3 September 2000. 66 N. Bjelakovic and F. Strazzari, “The Sack of Mostar, 1992–1994: The PoliticoMilitary Connection,” European Security, 8 (1999), pp. 73–102. 67 Judah, The Serbs, p. 247. 68 Maass, Love Thy Neighbor, p. 118. 69 Silber and Little, Yugoslavia, p. 296. 70 Judah, The Serbs, p. 243. 71 Ibid., 244. 72 X. Bougarel, Bosnie: Anatomie d’un Conﬂit, Paris: Editions La Découverte, 1996. 73 UN Experts, 1994: Annex III. 74 Judah, The Serbs, p. 244. 75 cf. Naylor, Patriots and Proﬁteers, p. 357. 76 See Urosˇ Komlenovic and Milos Vasic, “Dosije: Ratni Proﬁteri” (“Dossier: War Proﬁteers”), Vreme (Belgrade), 27 September 1993, pp. 23–24. 77 cf. X. Bougarel, “Bosnia and Herzegovina: State and Communitarianism,” p. 107, in D. A. Dyker and I. Vejvoda (eds), Yugoslavia and After, New York: AddisonWesley Longman, pp. 116–138. 78 X. Bougarel, Bosnie: Anatomie d’un Conﬂit. 79 Burg and Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina. 80 M. Sˇpegelj, “The First Phase, 1990–1992: The JNA Prepares for Aggression and Croatia for Defence,” p. 40, in B. Magasˇ and Zˇanic (eds), The War in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1991–1995, London: Frank Cass, 2001, pp. 14–41. 81 See Nijaz Dzˇaﬁc, “Oruzˇje iransko – Sˇutnja americˇka” (“Iranian Weapons – American Silence”), DANI (Sarajevo), 8 October 1999, pp. 34–36. 82 Clandestine access to arms supplies through Croatia was dramatically curtailed from spring 1993 to spring 1994 when the fragile Muslim–Croat alliance had broken down. Author interviews in Sarajevo with retired ABiH General Delic, 8 July 2002; retired ABiH general Sˇiber, 17 July 2002; and retired ABiH general Divjak, 11 July 2002. 83 American intelligence reports indicated that Bosnian government forces had only two tanks and only one or two armored personnel carriers in 1992, while Serb forces possessed 300 tanks and 200 armored personnel carriers. Bosnian government forces had two dozen artillery pieces compared to 600–800 on the side of the

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84 85

86 87 88 89 90 91 92

93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101

102 103 104 105 106

Serb forces. Michael R. Gordon, “Iran Said to Send Arms to Bosnians,” New York Times, 10 September 1992, p. A10. See the report on the Third World Relief Agency by Nijaz Dzˇaﬁc in DANI (Sarajevo), 1 October 2000, pp. 16–19 (Part I) and 8 October 2000, pp. 34–36 (Part II). Not only Islamic countries supported the Bosnian war effort. Slovenia reportedly served both as a transit route for and a supplier of weapons for Bosnia, through deals brokered by Hasan Cˇengic. See Zoran Odich, “Arms Trade’s Last Stop: Sarajevo,” AIM (Paris), 9 October 1997. John Pomfret, “How Bosnia’s Muslims Dodged Arms Embargo; Relief Agency Brokered Aid from Nations, Radical Groups,” Washington Post, 22 September 1996, p. A1. Tom Hunter, “The Arms Embargo that Wasn’t: Iran’s Shipments to Bosnia,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, 1 December 1997. Editorial, “Getting Serious on Bosnian Arms,” New York Times, 11 November 1994, p. A30. Burg and Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina, pp. 307–309, 313. Richard Norton Taylor, “America used Islamists to Arm the Bosnian Muslims: Ofﬁcial Dutch Report Says that Pentagon Broke UN Embargo,” Guardian (London), 22 April 2002, p. 13. Quoted in Anthony Lloyd, “Smuggled Munitions Strengthen Muslim Firepower,” The Times (London), 10 June 1994. The chief U.S. architect of the Dayton Peace Agreement, Richard Holbrooke, wrote in his memoir that “the shape of the diplomatic landscape will usually reﬂect the actual balance of forces on the ground. In concrete terms, this meant that as diplomats we could not expect the Serbs to be conciliatory at the negotiating table as long as they had experienced nothing but success on the battleﬁeld”. See Holbrooke, To End a War, New York: Modern Library, 1999, p. 73. M. Pugh, “Postwar Political Economy in Bosnia and Herzegovina: The Spoils of Peace,” Global Governance 8 (2002), pp. 467–482. cf. Government Accounting Ofﬁce, Bosnia Peace Operation: Crime and Corruption Threaten Successful Implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement, Washington, DC: GAO. 2000, p. 13. D. Stark and L. Bruszt, Postsocialist Pathways: Transforming Politics and Property in East Central Europe, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Author interview, Sarajevo, 15 July 2002. I thank Richard Snyder for pointing out this contrast. cf. M. Alibabic, Bosna u Kandzˇma KOS-a (“Bosnia in the Claws of KOS”), Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina: NIP Behar, 1996, p. 73. Senad Pecanin and Vildana Selimbegovic, “Abecada Korupcije” (“The Corruption Alphabet”), DANI (Sarajevo), 27 August 1999, pp. 16–21. Author interview, Ofﬁce of the High Representative, Sarajevo, 12 June 2001. Author interview with a senior ofﬁcial in the Bosnian Intelligence Agency, 15 July 2002. See also Emir Hodzˇic and Adnan Buturovic, “Kako su SDA i HDZ Za Sˇtitili (prije) Ratni Kriminal” (“How SDA and HDZ Protected (pre)War Crimes”), Slobodna Bosna (Sarajevo), 20 June 2002, pp. 5–8. Pugh, “Postwar Political Economy in Bosnia and Herzegovina.” Author interview, International Crisis Group, Sarajevo, 5 July 2002; and Ofﬁce of the High Representative, Sarajevo, 19 July 2002. Sˇiber, War Diary 1992, p. 147. See US Mission Daily Bulletin, “U.S. Moves against Balkan War Criminal Karadzic’s Support Network,” 10 March 2003, pp. 2–3. Tamara Skrozza, “Ko je Ko” (“Who is Who”), Vreme (Belgrade), 7 February 2002,

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107 108 109 110 111 112 113

114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124

125 126 127 128 129 130

131

pp. 26–27; and Vildana Selimbegovic, “Zˇetva Posijanog Straha” (“Reaping of the Sown Fears,” DANI (Sarajevo), 26 May 2000. The World Bank estimates that the underground economy represents 50–60 percent of Bosnia’s Gross Domestic Product. Author interview, World Bank (Sarajevo ofﬁce), 16 July 2002. Pugh, “Postwar Political Economy in Bosnia and Herzegovina.” Author interview, Customs and Fiscal Assistance Ofﬁce to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, 12 June 2001. Author interview with UN ofﬁcials, Sarajevo, 11 June 2001. Author interview, International Organization for Migration, Sarajevo, 7 June 2001. Borderline: UNMIBH Bulletin on State Border Service Activities, Vol. 2, No. 2 (March–April 2001), p. 1. Foreigners are about 30 percent of the customers, but are the source of approximately 70 percent of brothel revenues since they spend more than locals. Author interview, United Nations High Commission for Human Rights (Sarajevo ofﬁce), 12 July 2002. Philip Sherwell, “Guns, Girls, Drugs, Fake Track Suits: It’s All Here in the Wildest Market in the World,” Sunday Telegraph (London), 19 November 2000, p. 35. Jeffrey Smith, “Bosnian Mart Becomes Den of Criminal Enterprise,” Washington Post, 26 December 1999, p. A33. Ibid. Sherwell, “Guns, girls, drugs.” Smith, “Bosnian Mart.” Author interview, Ofﬁce of the High Representative, Sarajevo, 19 July 2002. See also Special Report “Arizona Market,” DANI (Sarajevo), 24 January 2003. Author interview with retired Croatian Army General Sˇpegelj, Zagreb, 23 July 2002. Author interview with former Croatian soldier, 28 June 2002. Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge, p. 128; Naylor, Patriots and Proﬁteers, p. 373. Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge, p. 70; Naylor, Patriots and Proﬁteers, pp. 370–371; P. Williams, “Organized Crime and the Illegal Economy in Kosovo,” unpublished paper, Ridgway Center, University of Pittsburgh, n.d. R. Hislope, “The Calm Before the Storm? The Inﬂuence of Cross-Border Networks, Corruption, and Contraband on Macedonian Stability and Regional Security,” paper prepared for presentation at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association,” San Francisco, 2001. Josip Novak, “Rat u Makedoniji” (“The War in Macedonia”), Globus (Zagreb), 23 March 2001, p. 26. Jasna Babic, “Albanski Rat za Sˇvercerske Puteve” (“Albanian War for Smuggling Routes”), Nacional (Zagreb), 15 March 2001. Boris Drenca and Daniel Sunter, “Serbia: Further Action Against Maﬁa Demanded,” Balkan Crisis Report, no. 432, 23 May 2003. Eric Jansson and Stefan Wagstyle, “The Cancer of Organized Crime that Riddles Serbia,” Financial Times (London), 14 March 2003. Adam LeBor, “Brussels Fears Serbian Gangsters,” Balkan Crisis Report, no. 414, 13 March 2003. Melisa Babic, Senad Avdic, and Mirsad Fazlic, “Diniceve Ubice u BiH” (“Dinic’s Killers in BiH”), Slobodna Bosna (Sarajevo), 20 March 2003; Adnan Buturovic, “Legija Stranaca: Rasadnik Balkanskih Zlocˇinaca” (“The Foreign Legion: The Nursery of the Balkan Criminals”), Slobodna Bosna (Sarajevo), 20 March 2003. Author interview, International Crisis Group (Belgrade), 30 June 2003.

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5 THE NORTH AFRICAN MUJAHIDEEN NETWORK OF THE WESTERN BALKANS Evan F. Kohlmann

In the decade that has followed since the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords marking the end of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, international investigators have gradually unraveled a micro-history detailing a secretive network of Islamic militants ensconced in the region and conspiring against their local and foreign enemies. This network is dominated overwhelmingly by Sunni Muslim extremists from North Africa and their disaffected brethren in the major cities of Western Europe. With connections spanning from Usama Bin Laden in Afghanistan to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, the North African “AfghanoBosniaks” continue even today to serve a pioneering role in contemporary security threats faced by Western Europe and North America. Unfortunately, the precise nature of this threat continues to be frequently clouded by erroneous propaganda and mistaken media reporting. This chapter draws from a range of sources, including raw terrorist communiqués, video recordings, and internal communications, U.S. and European law enforcement documents, declassiﬁed Bosnian intelligence reports, and interviews with eyewitnesses. It traces the troubling legacy of the North African mujahideen of the Balkans, from their ominous origins during the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, through their involvement in the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and ﬁnally to their contemporary role in organizing signiﬁcant anti-Western terrorist attacks on behalf of Al-Qaida. Indeed, four years after a series of major setbacks in 2001, remnants of the North African mujahideen network appear to have experienced an unexpected resurgence, demonstrating their persistence and potentially destabilizing effect on the region.

The Afghan cauldron Even from the very early days of the Afghan jihad in the 1980s, arriving Maghrebi “holy warriors” earned a reputation for their unbridled ruthlessness in 96

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battle. In 1988, the founding “godfather” of Al-Qaida – Palestinian cleric Abdullah Azzam – clashed with the Egyptians over control of mujahideen ﬁnancing and long-term strategy. While alive, Azzam had pressed for a complete victory in Afghanistan and the creation of an Islamic state before attempting to “export the revolution” elsewhere. However, the hotheaded Egyptians had other ideas. Even prior to the mysterious murder of Azzam in 1989, representatives approached the young Saudi exile Usama Bin Laden and admonished, “You shouldn’t be staying with Abdullah Azzam. He doesn’t do anything about the regimes – Saudi, Egyptian, Algerian. He’s just talking about Afghanistan.”1 Prominent Egyptian militants like Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri envisioned themselves capable of much grander schemes by latching onto the rising star of the subtly charismatic (and well-ﬁnanced) Bin Laden. A new wave of arriving jihadi recruits, mostly “young Muslim kids, without passports, running away from who knows what,” idolized the unassuming Saudi cast-out, who represented the embodiment of their own elusive dreams for personal redemption and glory.2 Among these radical youth, talk of overthrowing hated Middle Eastern governments in a wave of suicide terror resonated very clearly. In a crude attempt to mimic the early struggles of the Prophet Mohammed, these ragtag soldiers intended to use the time spent in exile to strengthen their ranks and prepare for a promised apocalyptic holy war against the excommunicated “inﬁdel regimes,” Jews, Hindus, and anyone else who stood in the way of creating a global Islamic empire (a philosophy known in Arabic as Takﬁr waal Hijra). Suspicion in Azzam’s unsolved murder now centers largely on followers of the blind Shaykh Omar Abdel Rahman, spiritual leader of both Al-Gama’at alIslamiyya (AGAI) and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ). The blind Shaykh is said to have been quite close to Usama Bin Laden from the days of the Afghan jihad, and allegedly was among the group of Egyptians who ﬁrst persuaded Bin Laden to “have a clear idea to use [the Arab recruits] after Afghanistan for other wars.”3 According to Abdullah Azzam’s son Hudhaifa: Rahman was saying that all governments [are] kuffar [inﬁdels] – and my father was saying that not all our governments were kuffar – that there were Islamic governments. Omar [Abdel Rahman] used to say that [government] workers were all kuffar and my father used to say they are innocent . . . Shaykh Omar used to say all of them were kuffar and wanted to kill them. My father was against this idea.4 In an interview with Asharq al-Awsat, former Saudi Arab-Afghan Hassan abdRabbuh al-Surayhi noted that following Azzam’s assassination, a mass of predominantly Egyptian mujahideen began to congregate at the residence of Usama Bin Laden in Peshawar – eager to win his support and feed his ego by “put[ting] him in the spotlight.”5 Al-Surayhi added, “Bin-Ladin’s ﬁnances were not a secret to anyone and I think the Egyptians wanted to exploit this angle.” They praised his virtues and convinced the young Saudi commander to wage an 97

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expansive global jihad against the international enemies of Al-Qaida. Surayhi suggested further that “[p]erhaps [Bin Laden] accepted the idea in order to become an amir so that all the Islamic jihad groups would be under his control, especially those that are in Egypt which are famous and well known.”6 With Bin Laden’s blessings, the Arab-Afghans were free to turn their attention to new targets outside of the borders of Afghanistan.

A new base for the Egyptian jihad The timing of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was propitious for the ArabAfghan movement. In January 1993, the Pakistani government, eager to put the Afghan jihad in the past, ordered the closure of Arab mujahideen ofﬁces in the country and threatened ofﬁcial deportation to any foreign ﬁghters who attempted to remain in Pakistan. A month later, the American FBI secretly recorded Shaykh Omar Abdel Rahman offering over the telephone to send new volunteers to the Arab-Afghan training camps in Pakistan. He was told, “all of them [are] closed, Sheik, nothing is left open . . . even the Base [Al-Qaida] is closed completely and from here . . . except for special situations.”7 Asked to comment by the media on the situation, a Saudi spokesman for the Arab-Afghans in Jeddah explained, “the Algerians cannot go to Algeria, the Syrians cannot go to Syria or the Iraqis to Iraq. Some will opt to go to Bosnia, the others will have to go into Afghanistan permanently.”8 For North African militants trained in Afghanistan, the real value of BosniaHerzegovina was intermediate status between Western Europe and the regimes controlling Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. It was a place with proximity to London, Riyadh, and Cairo, a place where terrorist recruits could train, coalesce into cells, and seek shelter from prosecution by foreign law enforcement. In another conversation wiretapped by the FBI, a lieutenant of Shaykh Omar Abdel Rahman explained the strategy of using the Bosnian war as a cover for a greater mission: mujahideen recruits “go to Bosnia, I mean, they depart . . . And whoever survives, I mean, could come and . . . [instruct] somewhere else, or Egypt, or any other place, etc . . . we can get started at any place where Jihad is needed.”9 Indeed, as early as September 1992, Mohammed Abdel-Gayyed, a representative of AGAI, admitted to journalists “We have ﬁghters in Bosnia. I can’t say how many they are . . . that’s a strategic secret.”10 By mid-1993, ArabAfghan ﬁghters were formally integrated into the Bosnian Army’s Muslim 3rd Corps as the elite “El-Mudzahedin Unit.” A subsequent memorandum issued by the Bosnian Muslim Military Security Service complained, “[a] special security problem is presented in that the commander of the [Bosnian] mujahideen unit is hiding the real manpower of his unit and that all members of this unit live and act under false names . . . [and] are hiding their identity, because they are the persons from the Interpol wanted circulars.”11 Another report from the Bosnian Military Security Service conﬁrmed, “a certain number of the citizens originat98

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ing from African-Asian countries are forbidden to return to their countries of origin and . . . the police of the countries concerned are looking for them.”12 The leaders of North African militant groups led by AGAI turned to the opportunities presented by the Bosnian war with a fanatic gusto. On 16 January 1993, only weeks before the World Trade Center bombing in New York, Shaykh Omar addressed a “Conference on Solidarity with Bosnia/Herzogovina” and demanded, Who is the one who is ﬁghting the Muslims? And, who is the one who wants to destroy them? There are two main enemies. The enemy who is at the foremost of the work against Islam are America and the Allies. Who is assisting the Serbs? And who is providing them with weapons and food? Europe, and behind it is America.”13 Furthermore, according to Shaykh Omar, because the U.S. and Great Britain seek to “exterminate the Muslims [in Bosnia] . . . then, we must be terrorists and we must terrorize the enemies of Islam and to frighten them and to disturb them and to shake the earth under their feet.” He concluded by directing listeners to “ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, with which you frighten the enemies of Allah, your enemies.”14 Perhaps the reason why Shaykh Omar was so eager to adopt the Bosnian Muslim cause was that his own extremist organization, AGAI, already had ﬁrm roots on the European continent. In the unlikely northern European city of Copenhagen, a group of senior Al-Gama’at leaders had found safe haven and a new base from which to operate. This group was headed by Shaykh Abu Talal al-Qasimy (a.k.a. Talaat Fouad Qassem), born in Egypt in June 1957. The Egyptian government imprisoned Al-Qasimy several times, both previous to and following the assassination of the late President Anwar Sadat. Shortly thereafter, al-Qasimy was able to use fake travel documents to escape Egypt and join the growing number of militant Muslim exiles in Afghanistan. While there, he “made an appointment with Jihad in the path of Allah, and . . . embraced the riﬂe.”15 In Afghanistan, he established Al-Gama’at’s ofﬁcial magazine, AlMurabeton, and wrote most of the early issues. When the Afghan civil war degenerated into hazardous factional ﬁghting, alQasimy was granted political asylum in Denmark, where he continued to spread his radical message as an editor at the foreign ofﬁce of Al-Murabeton in Copenhagen.16 One of the other four editors working in Copenhagen was Dr. Ayman alZawahiri, a founding member and second-in-command of Al-Qaida in Afghanistan.17 According to documents later seized by Italian counter-terrorism police, on 24 April 1993, Abu Talal al-Qasimy convened the ﬁrst meeting of the Shura Council of the European Union in Copenhagen, proposing to his colleagues that they develop the Shura Council in Europe as an independent command organism to “coordinate and make decisions,” and to accelerate efforts to provide aid to allied militant Islamic guerilla groups across North Africa.18 99

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The other participants at the meeting in Copenhagen included another top AGAI representative in Europe, the militant Egyptian Shaykh Anwar Shaaban (a.k.a. Abu Abdelrahman al-Masri). Shaaban was a well-known veteran of the Afghan jihad, who became the Imam at Milan’s Islamic Cultural Institute (ICI) and the primary spiritual leader of Arab mujahideen forces ﬁghting alongside the Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina. While still a student studying Islam in Egypt, Shaaban had loudly protested against the secular government of Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak in Cairo, and soon thereafter sought asylum in Afghanistan and several other “Muslim countries.”19 During the opening months of the war in the spring of 1992, Shaaban fashioned an epic role for himself (in the style of Abdullah Azzam) as the political spokesman for the foreign jihadis based in Bosnia.20 Like many other Arab-Afghans, however, by 1991, Shaaban no longer felt safe in Afghanistan as it collapsed into civil turmoil. He sought and obtained political asylum in Italy, and was disappointed by what he found: “the Muslim community in Italy was just the same as elsewhere in Europe: asleep and busy in the worldly affairs.” Aided by a collection of Afghan war veterans and Italian Islamists, Anwar Shaaban opened a major new headquarters in a converted garage in Milan. Knowledgeable mujahideen sources have praised Shaaban’s efforts in Milan, and noted that Islamic Cultural Institute was “the center of much activity and it gained much popularity amongst the local Muslims.”21 Similarly, L’Houssaine Kherchtou, a former Moroccan member of the AlQaida terrorist organization, later testiﬁed during the federal trial of four AlQaida operatives in the U.S. that Shaaban used the Islamic Cultural Institute as a critical Arab-Afghan recruiting center for young Muslim extremists living in Europe. According to Kherchtou, Shaaban had personally helped arrange Pakistani visas for him and three other mujahideen recruits who then went on to an Al-Qaida military training camp in eastern Afghanistan.22 French counterterrorism ofﬁcials concluded that the ICI in Milan, under the lead of Shaaban, served an “essential role” as a command center for a variety of Maghrebi armed militant groups including AGAI, the Tunisian An-Nahda (“Islamic Revival”), and the Algerian Groupe Islamique Armée (Armed Islamic Group, or GIA).23 After searching Anwar Shaaban’s ofﬁce at the ICI, Italian counterterrorism police concurred that the Institute was “characterized by . . . a constant closeness to the activities of Egyptian terrorist organizations, especially those of [Al-Gama’at alIslamiyya], in the area of strategic and operational choices . . . the recruiting of mujaheddin for the Yugoslavian territories . . . the establishment of a European network for the connection among fundamentalist cells . . . [and] logistic and operational support to the armed cells active on Egyptian soil.”24 In the summer of 1992, Shaykh Anwar Shaaban helped lead the ﬁrst quasiofﬁcial Arab-Afghan delegation to arrive in Bosnia, accompanied by a number of his Italian colleagues. As the ﬁghters themselves have testiﬁed, “Sheik Anwar was not a textbook scholar: he was a scholar who practiced what he preached and fought oppression at every level, just like the companions and the early gen100

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erations of Muslims . . . with books in his hands and military uniform on his body. Not only did he teach but he fought as well.” In one audiotape, mujahideen representatives attempt to unravel the mysterious life of Shaaban and note that “in the footsteps of Sheik Abdullah Azzam, Sheik Anwar Shaaban carried the responsibilities of the Mujahideen regiment in Bosnia . . . teaching, encouraging, and inspiring the ﬁghters, laying the same foundation in Bosnia that Shaykh Abdullah Azzam laid in Afghanistan.”25 Shaaban shuttled back and forth to his headquarters in Milan, bringing with him to Bosnia a host of veteran ﬁghters and new recruits. In a fax from Shaaban in Milan to a potential Muslim donor in Qatar, he spoke of how he was personally “convinced that the Islamic projects in Europe must have absolute priority, considering how making these places stable bases for Muslims can be useful for Muslims all over the world.”26 Undoubtedly, Shaaban hoped to use the Bosnian war as a means to create an unassailable garrison for North African militants in Europe. Not surprisingly, many of those that Shaaban introduced to Bosnia in 1992 became “the commanders and trainers, the cream of the Mujahideen.”27 Almost immediately, Shaaban’s mission in the Balkans strayed from its purported goal of defending innocent Bosnian Muslims. In 1993, U.S. diplomats and intelligence ofﬁcials began to privately express concerns that Egyptian Islamic extremists were targeting the U.S. embassy in Albania for a potential terrorist attack. According to the CIA, “Al-Gama’at members, including . . . Anwar Shaban . . . were involved in the 1993 surveillance of the U.S. embassy in Tirana.”28 The surveillance was conﬁrmed when a suspected militant was observed driving “repeatedly around the embassy.”29 Separately, the CIA gathered telephone intercepts that included an “apparent order from overseas instructing a Muslim-charity worker to case the embassy.”30 No successful attack was ever carried out, likely as a result of close cooperation between the CIA and Albanian security ofﬁcials.

The Balkan coalition of North African mujahideen Other North African extremists also played key roles in the growing mujahideen network anchored in Bosnia. Dr. Abul-Harith al-Liby (a.k.a. Mohammed Abdelwahab Yousef), a Libyan then in his late thirties from Austria, was among the top military commanders of the Arab mujahideen in Bosnia-Herzegovina beginning in December 1992. His medical skills and sharp mind were invaluable assets for militants who were often easily provoked and prone to violent confrontations. Mujahideen sources have since written of Dr. Abul-Harith: With a Kalashnikov riﬂe in one hand and a medical kit in the other, he accompanied the mujahideen in all of their operations. Fighting in the front line one minute and attending to the injured in the second line in the next minute, Abul-Harith used the medical knowledge that Allah had given him, and became the doctor in charge of the mujahideen . . . 101

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His wisdom, intelligence, and strong character made him a senior ﬁgure amongst the foreign ﬁghters.31 Nor can one ignore the key roles played by Algerian nationals, many of whom were GIA members. In the early 1990s, returning Algerian Arab-Afghan veterans were largely responsible for founding the GIA, an organization known for its particularly merciless philosophy of murdering anyone who stood in the way of its goal of establishing a fundamentalist regime, including competing Muslim clerics, politicians, foreigners, journalists, teachers, women, children, and other such “enemies of Allah.” The GIA was so brutal and feared in the Arab world that Bin Laden himself allegedly urged its leadership to rename and reform themselves in order to present a “better image of the Jihad.”32 In 1998, a group of Algerian GIA commanders followed Bin Laden’s directives and established the Salaﬁst Group for Prayer and Combat (GSPC) as “a continuation of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) [that] follows the same ideology.”33 Despite its controversial reputation, the nefarious GIA found many eager recruits from the downtrodden North African urban ghettos throughout Western Europe. With soaring unemployment and systematic racial intolerance against Arabs, French slums and jails in particular provided ideal breeding grounds for brainwashing youths in radical Islamic beliefs. One Parisian of Algerian descent explained, “There are millions of us who feel excluded and unwanted . . . A lot of us think since we have nothing to lose, we might as well turn to violence to get some respect. There is so much disgust around here that one day the authorities will wake up and ﬁnd they are ﬁghting a civil war.” Another unemployed North African immigrant in Paris chimed in, “I think you have to be a little soft in the head to follow these Islamic radicals, but I understand why there is so much frustration. When you can’t get a job and you get checked ﬁve times by the police even when you are well dressed, you begin to think that society has declared you an enemy. So you want to ﬁght back.”34 The extremism of the Algerian Islamists extended far beyond the borders of their homeland. Algerian mujahideen volunteers saw themselves as heirs to a legacy of confrontation with Christian “crusaders”, whether it be in North Africa or in Europe. “I hate the French,” an Algerian Arab-Afghan in Sarajevo bitterly noted, “hate them – more than I do other countries, because of what they did in Algeria. We drove them out of my country and we will also win in Bosnia.”35 One Algerian commander in particular distinguished himself by rising quickly through the ranks of the mujahideen in BiH: Abu el-Ma’ali (a.k.a. Abdelkader Mokhtari, “The Gendarme”). Abu el-Ma’ali was a recent university graduate working in Italy in 1992 who traveled to Bosnia soon after hearing “about the aggression on BiH” and “was among the ﬁrst Arab volunteers to join the BiH Army Defense Forces.”36 By mid-1993, he was the undisputed top “amir” of the Bosnian El-Mudzahidin Unit, answering only to Shaykh Anwar Shaaban. Abu el-Ma’ali was no exception among his militant North African colleagues: he has since been described by U.S. ofﬁcials as a “junior Osama bin 102

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Laden.”37 In reﬂection, Abu Hamza al-Masri, an Egyptian Arab-Afghan recruiter based in London who has known Abu el-Ma’ali since the early days of the Bosnian jihad, mused “I think he’s a good person, a good-hearted person. Hardworking. He was a leader . . . hard worker, a lion in ﬁghting . . . a good brother – but he’s too young and he’s too naive.”38

The Dayton Accords and mounting conﬂict with the West In late September 2005, ARBiH forces halted their ﬁnal military offensive in the Vozuca region, marking the end of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Arab ﬁghters in the El-Mudzahedin Unit were disappointed that the Bosnians had ceased hostilities under pressure from U.S. and European diplomats. For the mujahideen, armed victory on the battleﬁeld, not negotiated compromise or halfway peace deals, was the measure of success. As the Arab-Afghans noted in reﬂection, “the most hated thing for the mujahid is the peace of the enemy.”39 On September 22, in a communiqué from Zenica, Abu el-Ma’ali adamantly demanded of his “enemies” in the U.S., French, and British governments: [W]hy were you surprised to see the victory of Muslims? The reason is well-known; the US which controls this ailing world along with the Jews and Christians . . . hated to see the [Muslims] becoming victorious over the worshippers of the cross, the Orthodox, and they wanted to use this for their own advantage . . . We know that we will have a day in which to ﬁght the Jews, and the Almighty will grant us victory, and also we know that the best soldiers will ﬁght the Christians and all of these are promises and rejoices from the Messenger of Allah.40 Several days later, Abu el-Ma’ali followed this declaration with an appeal directly to the international supporters and sympathizers of the Bosnian mujahideen movement to “RISE UP IN SUPPORT OF YOUR BROTHERS, and remove the obstacles from around you. We send you our greetings . . . despite the plots of the enemies and the un-believers in an evil attempt to suppress these successes and conquests in order to claim it for themselves.” Abu elMa’ali blamed these “conspiracies” on “the US and the Crusade West, so be aware of the plots of the enemies of Allah and their hate of Islam and Muslims, and Allah is well aware of what they do.”41 Besides peace negotiations aimed at ending the Bosnian war, in the eyes of the North African mujahideen, the United States and Europe were also guilty of a host of other unforgivable crimes – namely, the arrest and trial of Al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya spiritual leader Shaykh Omar Abdel Rahman. Following the detention of the blind Shaykh in New York, former senior Al-Qaida member Jamal al-Fadl attended leadership meetings in Khartoum, Sudan with other senior aides to Usama Bin Laden. According to al-Fadl, Al-Qaida regarded Shaykh Omar’s arrest as “very sad and . . . very bad . . . and we have to do something . . . They 103

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talk about what we have to do against America.”42 When the newspaper Asharq al-Awsat published a letter purportedly from the Iranian government urging AGAI to replace Shaykh Omar Abdel Rahman as their international leader because of his legal troubles in the United States, Shaykh Anwar Shaaban wrote a blistering response to his colleagues: “As a result of [learning] this . . . information, we would like to conﬁrm the following: meetings between us and other nations – particularly the Iranian Shiites – will never take place [again], if Allah wills it.”43 Later, in mid-1995, the CIA received information that two militants – an Algerian national in the Balkans “afﬁliated with [the ArabAfghans]” and “a senior commander of the [Bosnian] mujahedin, also Algerian” – were “preparing for an unspeciﬁed terrorist attack in Europe if Shaykh Umar Abd al-Rahman, then on trial in New York for complicity in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, were convicted.”44 Another of the belligerent “crusader plots” decried by the North African mujahideen in Bosnia-Herzegovina was the sudden disappearance in September 1995 of AGAI’s European spokesman Abu Talal al-Qasimy, who was captured by Croatian forces in mid-September en route to Zenica. On October 20, the Maghrebi mujahideen responded to the arrest of Abu Talal al-Qasimy with a suicide car bombing attack on a police station in the Croatian port town of Rijeka, wounding at least 29 people.45 According to the CIA, the Rijeka suicide bombing attack “was overseen by Anwar Shaban . . . He and other mujahedin leaders had begun planning to attack NATO forces which would be sent to Bosnia.”46 A day after the attack in Rijeka, Western news agencies in Cairo received a faxed communiqué, allegedly from AGAI representatives, claiming responsibility for the suicide bombing – carried out in order “to prove that the case of Sheik Talaat Fouad Qassem . . . will not pass but will bring cascades of blood bleeding from Croatian interests inside and outside . . . You Croats will be mistaken if you think that this matter will go peacefully.”47 Al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya demanded that the Croatian government “release Sheikh Qassimi and apologize formally through the media . . . Close the gates of hell which you have opened upon yourselves . . . otherwise you will be starting a war the end of which only Allah (God) knows.”48 Interviewed in the fall of 1995 in the “Call to Jihad” newsletter bulletin of the Bosnian mujahideen brigade, Abu el-Ma’ali seemed to be particularly satisﬁed by the results achieved in Rijeka. French investigators believed that the October terror attack “demonstrated that Abu el-Maali was closely related to [AGAI], both ideologically and in practice.”49 By late November 1995, the North African mujahideen leadership in BosniaHerzegovina was in the midst of preparation for insurgent warfare targeting arriving U.S. peacekeeping troops in retaliation for a growing list of international grievances. On December 10, thousands of Bosnian Muslim soldiers and allied foreign mujahideen units marched in Zenica shouting “American tanks will not scare us!” A British mujahideen volunteer close to the venerated Dr. Abul-Harith al-Liby recounted the discussions taking place at the foreign mujahideen headquarters near Zenica: 104

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[W]hen the Americans came to Bosnia . . . the situation had developed in such a way that it seemed as if we were going to have to ﬁght the Americans. And Abul-Harith, he turned to me and he said, “We will become an example for these Bosnians. We will ﬁght for our belief and the lost land. Please Allah, will give us victory and we will defeat [the Americans] or they will kill us. But we will not ﬂee, and we will be an example for the Bosnians.”50 True to his word, Abul-Harith was “instrumental” in “preparing the mujahideen medical supply line should they need to ﬁght the Americans.”51 On 14 December, according to mujahideen sources, Shaykh Anwar Shaaban gave a lecture to lingering members of the El-Mudzahedin Unit after morning prayers. He discussed the evolving situation in the Balkans and “how the world’s powers were trying to suppress the right of Islam from Bosnia with the Dayton Peace Accords.” Standing beside Anwar Shaaban during his speech were Dr. Abul-Harith al-Liby and other key Arab commanders from abroad. Mujahideen representatives claimed that, given the uniﬁed presence of these “key commanders” in central Bosnia, “the entire world felt threatened after the success of the peace deal.”52 After delivering his speech to the mujahideen, Anwar Shaaban, Dr. AbulHarith al-Liby, and several others boarded a Land Cruiser driven by a foreign ﬁghter from Algeria intending to travel from Zenica to the former frontline near Zavidovici. By the late afternoon, the Land Cruiser approached an HVO checkpoint outside Zepce.53 According to UN spokesman Major Lindsay Rumgay, “A vehicle with three or four Mujahedeen drove through an HVO (Bosnian Croat) checkpoint . . . about midday. The HVO got into another vehicle and pursued them to a junction where a ﬁreﬁght followed with both sides ﬁring small calibre weapons.”54 After a brief gun battle, the HVO soldiers killed Shaykh Anwar Shaaban, Dr. Abul-Harith al-Liby, and their other comrades.55 El-Mudzahedin Unit members provided the following eulogy: Out of the thousands of scholars preaching in the world today, Sheik Anwar was among the few who took their knowledge to the frontline and used it where it was most effective . . . He had carried the Mujahideen regiment in Bosnia on his shoulders throughout the three years of the war . . . And ﬁnally we say to the enemies behind the assassination of Sheik Anwar that for every Mujahid scholar that you remove, a hundred more youth will be ready to replace him.56 When asked in a magazine interview in 2005 why the North African mujahideen did not seek revenge for the incident, Abu el-Ma’ali replied: And what were we supposed to do? Any action would inevitably lead to a conﬂict with the ones we wanted to help and with whom we were 105

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together in trenches. We left the matter to Allah and to those responsible in the political leadership and judiciary. It seems, however, that this ﬁle has been thrown into a drawer and forgotten, and I have a feeling things will remain as they are because some foreign centers of power are behind this assassination.57 Abu el-Ma’ali insisted that his men were not prepared to wage war in 1995 against Alija Izetbegovic, to whom the Algerian was indebted. He added, “The fact is, we didn’t know anyone other than [Bosnian President] Alija [Izetbegovic]. Even outside BiH, he was well-known as a ﬁghter for Muslim rights in this region. That is why we only believed him or those recommended by him.”58

The westward march The 1993 World Trade Center attack, as well as bombings of the Paris metro in 1995, proved the particular strength of Al-Qaida-linked North African mujahideen organizations such as AGAI and the GIA. The Egyptian and Algerian Islamic militants gained a distinct reputation among their comrades for employing fanatic methods and ﬁelding an impressive international sleeper cell network. In 1997, Shaykh Omar managed to issue a new fatwah from inside his U.S. prison cell urging his followers to carry out revenge attacks on the “inﬁdels”: “Cut the transportation of their countries, tear it apart, destroy their economy, burn their companies, eliminate their interests, sink their ships, shoot down their planes, kill them on the sea, air, or land. Kill them when you ﬁnd them, take them and encircle them, paralyze their every post.”59 An Algerian Arab-Afghan later testiﬁed in U.S. federal court that he recalled the same fatwah distributed widely at Al-Qaida’s training camps in Afghanistan “issued by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman with his picture on it . . . It said it was a fatwah by Omar Abdel Rahman from prison. It says ﬁght Americans and hit their interest everywhere.”60 Meanwhile, in February 1998, Bin Laden publicly formalized his partnership with Al-Gama’at and Al-Jihad in Afghanistan during the inauguration of the “World Islamic Front Against Jews and Crusaders” dedicated to “kill[ing] the Americans and plunder[ing] their money wherever and whenever [we] ﬁnd it.”61 For the radical North African mujahideen ﬁghters educated and headquartered in the Balkans, the campaign of terror targeting France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and the United States had already been initiated years earlier. In early May 1996, for example, an Egyptian veteran of the Bosnian war known as Salim al-Korshani issued a direct threat on behalf of AGAI in Croatian newspapers. Identifying himself as the commander of the “Bosnian Islamic Jihad” (the local military branch of AGAI), al-Korshani stressed that Bosnian mujahideen veterans were being speciﬁcally trained to return to their homelands and to inﬁltrate Western society. He threatened: 106

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Very soon the world will hear their message. They are trained for kidnapping, murder and suicide missions . . . We’ll attack the invader [UN peacekeepers] and their allies [NATO troops] until we liberate our country [Bosnia]. [We] will do the same things that [our] brothers in Lebanon and Palestine do. What is happening in Bosnia-Herzegovina today, reminds me of Kuwait. Americans came to liberate, but stayed on. NATO . . . want[s] to form bases in Bosnia. We won’t allow that. With our brother Bosniaks, we’ll attack them everywhere . . . My message to Croatia is to release Abu Talal [al-Qasimy] or give us information on him before it is too late. Time will show this is not an idle threat.62 As if to underscore this message, in September 1997, another car bomb exploded near a police station in Croatian-held Mostar wounding over ﬁfty people. According to then BiH Interior Minister Mehmed Zilic, “The way the terrorist attack was carried out indicates professional terrorists from Islamic countries.”63 Indeed, almost immediately after the signing of the Dayton Accord, Bosniantrained North African mujahideen cells with close connections to Abu el-Ma’ali in Zenica began a series of terrorist operations across the Balkans, Italy, France, and beyond. One of Abu el-Ma’ali’s intimate disciples – French Muslim convert Christophe Caze – quickly achieved infamy both in Bosnia-Herzegovina and France for his thuggish and violent behavior. A 1994 BiH Military Intelligence report documented an incident where Caze – ﬂanked by “ten armed members of the ‘El Mujahidin’ Unit . . . entered the surgery room at the Regional Medical Center ‘Dzemal Bijedic’ in Zenica with his side arms and he harassed the medical staff there.”64 In 1996, only a few months after Dayton, Caze was gunned down in a ﬁerce confrontation with French police who were attempting to apprehend him in connection with the attempted car bombing of a local police station in the city of Lille.65 In Caze’s electronic addressbook, French investigators found extensive contact information for both Abu el-Ma’ali and one of his key Algerian mujahideen lieutenants Fateh Kamel.66 The addressbook also contained telephone numbers for master document forger Zohair Choulah – a commander of the Bosnian mujahideen and key associate of Fateh Kamel deemed “ofﬁcially unwelcome” in France since 1995. Choulah’s alias “Abdul Barr” was printed in Caze’s organizer along with a corresponding Sarajevo number linked to alleged members of Al-Gama’at Al-Islamiyya.67 At the time, a high-ranking French police ofﬁcial admitted that investigators were studying the North African network in the Balkans very closely: “It was enough here that one person served in Bosnia. This sort of thing will repeat itself.”68 Further south in Albania, the CIA was still engaged in a quiet battle with locally-based Egyptian extremists from the EIJ and Al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya who continued to target regional U.S. interests. After frequent conversations 107

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with Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri himself, Egyptian militants in Albania learned of the formulation of an explicit alliance between Zawahiri and Usama Bin Laden and the “World Islamic Front Against Jews and Crusaders” in a phone call with a member of the EIJ’s media wing. According to former Islamic Jihad member Ahmed Ibrahim al-Naggar, “There is a direct beneﬁt from the merging of the groups under bin Laden, ﬁnancial strength being the most important.”69 Another of the Egyptian exiles in Albania being tracked by U.S. intelligence, Sabri Ibrahim al-’Attar, narrated his fate in his subsequent military trial: After the signing of the Dayton peace agreement, we the Arabs felt that our stay in Bosnia was not desirable anymore . . . we were compelled to ﬂee to Kosovo. On the way there, I was arrested with others by the Serb intelligence services and I believe CIA agents. We could not check the identity of those who arrested us. All I remember was that they were very harsh and treated us inhumanely. We were held for about a month until I was handed over with others to the Egyptian authorities.70 These men, known as the “Albanian Returnees,” caused a huge stir when they were rendered to Egypt, and subsequently brought before one of the largest North African mass trials of Islamic militants during the 1990s. The involvement of the U.S. in the extraction of the extremist Egyptians was not taken lightly by their commander, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Several of the Islamic Jihad Movement’s most prominent commanders were arrested in Albania and deported to Egypt, including Ahmad Salamah Mabruk, Zawahiri’s “right-hand man.”71 Neither had the Egyptians forgiven or forgotten the U.S. role in the captures of Shaykh Omar Abdel Rahman and Abu Talal al-Qasimy. The apparent response to these latest “transgressions” came on 7 August 1998, when two U.S. embassies in East Africa were suicide-bombed almost simultaneously by Al-Qaida cells thought loyal to the EIJ. Two days earlier, the “Information Ofﬁce of the Jihad Group in Egypt” had issued a statement through the newspaper Al-Hayat accusing the American government of masterminding the arrest of the “Albanian returnees” for “declaring jihad against the United States and Israel and their trade, and cooperation with the mujahidin in Kosovo outside US inﬂuence.” The statement added, “We are interested in brieﬂy telling the Americans that their message has been received and that the response, which we hope they will read carefully, is being [prepared] . . . in the language that they understand.”72 Italian investigators later claimed to ﬁnd direct links between the Al-Qaida plotters responsible for the August 1998 embassy bombings and Anwar Shaaban’s former headquarters at the Islamic Cultural Institute in Milan.73 The growing publicity surrounding the persistent foreign mujahideen problem in the Balkans had an adverse effect on the militant network. In 2001, the North African mujahideen suffered numerous losses as key Egyptian and Algerian commanders were rounded up by local authorities and rendered to 108

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unfriendly third-party governments. Even prior to 11 September 2001, BiH ofﬁcials had already moved to arrest and deport Egyptian AGAI commander Imad el-Misri (a.k.a. Ahmad Faragalla), a former top member of the El-Mudzahidin Unit and an unabashed advocate of terrorist attacks on U.S. military forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina.74 Al-Qaida’s suicide hijacking attacks on New York and Washington D.C. only increased the urgency of ongoing counterterrorism operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Between 17 and 21 October 2001, BiH authorities detained at least eleven Islamic militants linked to the international North African sleeper cell network who were plotting a crude aerial attack on two American military bases in Bosnia: Eagle Base and Camp Connor. An unnamed NATO source was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as stating that the terrorists were suspected of planning to collect a small armada of light planes and helicopters from Visoko airﬁeld, and suicide-crash them into the foreign military installations. The information had come from an intelligence intercept on 16 October in Sarajevo of a conversation discussing U.S. bombing in Afghanistan, and “what the response should be” in Europe. After a discussion of hitting a collection of American and British targets in the region, the callers ended with a deﬁnite “Tomorrow, we will start.”75 The apparent ringleader of the group was a forty-one-year-old Algerian named Bensayah Belkacem, (a.k.a. “Majed”). American intelligence had become familiar with Belkacem through monitoring of the satellite telephones of a number of his terrorist cohorts in Afghanistan. Police who raided Belkacem’s various local residences found Algerian and Yemeni identity papers, blank passports – and, according to BiH Interior Minister Muhammad Besic, the telephone number of Abu el-Ma’ali.76 A closer look at his cell phone records revealed that Belkacem had also called locations in Afghanistan at least seventy times in the month following the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. Another member of Belkacem’s cell in Bosnia – Algerian Arabic-language teacher Saber Lahmar – was a known GIA militant who had already served a brief prison term in post-war BiH on illegal weapons and terrorism charges. On 19 October, a local Bosnian news magazine reported that a telephone number ascribed to Abu el-Ma’ali was found among Lahmar’s belongings at the time of his arrest.77 Three months later, Belkacem and ﬁve other prisoners were loaded onto a U.S. aircraft and sent to the U.S. holding facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. On 12 February 2002, U.S. law enforcement monitored a telephone conversation from a top-ranking Al-Qaida operative worriedly discussing the developments in Bosnia-Herzegovina and how “they” had taken Al Hajj Boudella – a former military instructor at Al-Qaida’s Al-Sadda terrorist camp in Afghanistan who later settled in the Balkans – “in a special plane . . . [t]o Cuba.” The operative suggested that the capture of Boudella and the other Bosnian-based North African militants en route to Cuba “means . . . there is death that we will be swallowing. Meaning, the razor will fall on us.”78

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A revival of jihad in the Balkans? Four years later, the initial momentum in confronting the remnants of the North African militant network in the Balkans appears to have stalled. As international attention has been diverted to bloody conﬂicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, a marked resurgence has taken place in mujahideen activity across southeastern Europe. On 27 July 2002, Algerian Muslim missionary Redouane Guesmia and two associates were arrested by KFOR peacekeepers and held prisoner for several weeks at a nearby U.S.-run detention facility for allegedly conducting tactical surveillance of U.S. interests in Kosovo.79 Within a month, several other North Africans and ethnic Albanians were detained by KFOR for alleged threats against international peacekeepers. Most, if not all, of these suspects were eventually released from ofﬁcial custody. Meanwhile, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, though Abu el-Ma’ali was ordered to leave in 1999, the spirit of his predominantly North African mujahideen movement continues to prosper. When I interviewed Abu Hamza al-Masri at his North London mosque in 2002, he complained, “Bosnia has very soft people and at the moment they are just confused. They like Islam, they love Islam, but they are confused by the efforts from Saudi Arabia and the war against Islam from the West. They are still disorientated.” However, Abu Hamza insisted that Abu el-Ma’ali and his mujahideen had been successful in “put[ting] the seed of pure Islam back in the Balkans. And it is growing, it is growing . . . It will take them about 5–6 years [2007–2008] until they [begin] compounding strongly, them and the Albanians together.”80 Interestingly, much as Abu Hamza predicted, the remnants of the Balkan mujahideen appear to be once again ﬂourishing through a network of business and charitable front groups, ﬂanked by a vocal minority of native Bosnian Muslim extremists. Perhaps the most important single organization in this respect is the Aktivna Islamska Omladina (Active Islamic Youth, AIO) movement, founded by Abu elMa’ali and demobilized Bosnian mujahideen veterans. AIO President Adnan Pezo, a former deputy commander in the El-Mudzahedin Unit, explained to Bosnian journalists, “Several of us Bosniaks decided to found the AIO, towards the end of the war, because we realized that we should continue da’wa, the Islamic mission.”81 Another top AIO administrator, Izmet Fazlic, openly boasts, “it is certain the Arab Mujahedins made a huge, huge impact on me. I am proud of that . . . The ﬁrst time I saw an Arab Mujahedin I had the impression, to put it simply, that the men didn’t belong to this world . . . I instantly liked their way of communicating, their demeanor, their attitude towards the brothers.”82 In October 2002, SFOR peacekeepers arrested an alleged member of the AIO, Bosnian Sabahudin Fijuljanin, “after he had conducted surveillance of Eagle Base in addition to other related events and activities, including possession of a fully functional anti-tank weapon.”83 Fijuljanin reportedly also admitted to previous surveillance of SFOR facilities.84 Furthermore, according to SFOR Lt. Cmdr. Yves Vanier, “We have information which links Fijuljanin to 110

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al-Qaida.”85 The ofﬁcial media organ of the AIO, Saff Magazine, later published an interview with Fijuljanin about his “ordeal” in late 2002 at the hands of international peacekeepers: [T]hey told me that I drove by their base in my van on October 13, and that I was following them . . . they said that I ‘harassed’ them on 15 other occasions. I told them that I really had no explanation for those 15 times . . . I told them that I had a LAW [light anti-tank weapon] in my house, which I found in the woods and wanted to turn in. When the commander heard that I said a LAW, he jumped . . . They mentioned a member of the Algerian group. I can’t remember his name. They told me that he would, if he were me, gladly accept this savior’s hand that they were offering me. He is beating his head off the walls in Cuba and will never see his three daughters.86 Fijuljanin alleged that he had been repeatedly questioned – including by members of foreign intelligence services – “about the channels of getting that Islamic Youth Magazine SAFF” and the identities of the editors and writers of the magazine: “They asked me about the Active Islamic Youth . . . who ﬁnanced it and in which cities it had its ofﬁces.”87 Fijuljanin continued to deny any wrongdoing and insisted he was not a member of the Active Islamic Youth, though he conceded to regularly reading Saff Magazine. Another entity co-founded by Abu el-Ma’ali, a purported Halal meat company and religious charity known as Bedr Bosna, has also come under increasing scrutiny for strong ties to former North African and Syrian commanders of the El-Mudzahedin Unit. The group was named in honor of “Operation Badr”, the ﬁnal major battle of the Bosnian war in September 1995 spearheaded by elite foreign mujahideen units. After personally observing a Bedr Bosna storefront in Zenica in May 2005, I was surprised to see no apparent customers or products for sale. Meanwhile, at least one Muslim extremist, arrested by BiH authorities in mid-2005 in connection with a transnational terrorist plot to blow up the British embassy in Sarajevo, also turned out to have been a former employee of Bedr Bosna.88 Other, better known faces from the North African mujahideen network have also returned to their old haunts in Bosnia-Herzegovina. After serving only four years in a French prison for providing false documents to terrorists, Moroccan national Karim Said Atmani arrived in Sarajevo in April 2005. One U.S. ofﬁcial has referred to Atmani as a “crazy warrior with a nose so broken and twisted that he could sniff around corners.”89 For roughly ﬁve years between 1994 and 1999, Atmani worked as Fateh Kamel’s “right hand” man amongst the Bosnian mujahideen.90 Atmani’s links with the Arab ﬁghters based in the Balkans were long and substantial, and he reportedly also had a close personal relationship with Abu el-Ma’ali. Throughout 1994 and 1995, Atmani was ofﬁcially tasked with organizing the transfer of foreign guerillas to Bosnia from staging points in 111

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Milan and elsewhere in Europe. Italian police found corresponding evidence at the Islamic Cultural Institute of frequent calls from Atmani to Abu el-Ma’ali in Zenica during the mid-1990s.91 On 26 June 1995, during Operation Sphinx, the Italians searched the ofﬁce of Shaykh Anwar Shaaban in Milan and found, under Shaaban’s personal writing pad, a fraudulent passport with the photo of Karim Said Atmani.92 Upon his most recent return to Sarajevo this past spring, Atmani was reportedly met at the airport by the notorious Zoheir Choulah – yet another veteran ﬁgure from the European network of Abu el-Ma’ali and Fateh Kamel. Even Abu el-Ma’ali himself has suddenly resurfaced, for the ﬁrst time in several years. In July 2005, Saff Magazine published photos and a new interview with the mysterious Algerian commander. Without disclosing his exact location, the Saff editors explained, “It did not take long to persuade Algerian Ebul-Meali to give an interview to Saff. It was more difﬁcult to ﬁnd him. Always smiling and ready to joke, he was happy to see ‘his brothers from Bosnia.’ ” Abu el-Ma’ali angrily denied that the El-Mudzahedin Unit had committed war crimes during the Bosnian war and insisted “[we] did not have any connections with Al-Qaida.”93 To the east, in the heart of Serbia, Belgrade police arrested a suspected illegal immigrant in June 2005 only to discover that he was actually a most wanted suspect in the March 2004 Madrid train bombings. Moroccan Abdelmajid Bouchar was detained after being spotted traveling south on a train from Subotica to Belgrade and presenting false Iraqi documents during a routine passport check. Allegedly, Serbian police grew suspicious when Bouchar refused to answer their questions and he was subsequently positively identiﬁed through Interpol.94 In the aftermath of the Madrid bombings, Bouchar is reported to have been hiding out in an apartment with seven other Moroccan terrorist fugitives in the Spanish suburb of Leganes on 3 April 2004. He is the only one of the men who managed to escape – the others blew themselves up when police surrounded the building.95 In comments to journalists, Serbian Interior Minister Dragan Jocic said local police believed Bouchar was most likely just passing through Serbia. He noted, “Serbia-Montenegro lies on important east-west transit routes.”96 The Balkan transit routes have become more crucial as not-so-distant Iraq has developed into the primary zone of Arab-Afghan mujahideen activity under the lead of the Jordanian commander Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Needless to say, Zarqawi’s network itself already has known ties to the jihadi network in Bosnia-Herzegovina. According to a commemorative video recording released by Al-Qaida’s Committee in Iraq, former top Zarqawi deputy Abu Anas al-Shami (a.k.a. Omar Yousef Jumah) ﬁrst “began his journey in jihad” in Bosnia-Herzegovina where he worked as “an Islamic missionary and a ﬁghter . . . for a year and a half” in the mid-1990s.97 Once again in Iraq, North African ﬁghters are demonstrating their predominance in the ﬁeld of Arab-Afghan terrorism. Twin suicide bombing attacks on the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad in August and September 2003 were carried out respectively by Abu Farida al-Masri (an Egyptian) and Abu Usama al-Maghribi (a Moroccan).98 112

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As inquiries continues into the 2005 Bedr Bosna-linked conspiracy targeting the British embassy in Sarajevo, it remains to be seen whether cooperation between local ofﬁcials and foreign peacekeeping forces will be sufﬁcient to permanently uproot the longstanding underground network of Islamic militants that continues to lurk in dark corners of the region. Though the calls of religious extremists have utterly failed to resonate among the vast majority of Bosnian and Albanian Muslims, the Arab-Afghans have been successful in recruiting a small but determined group of indigenous followers. Perhaps what is most disturbing about the evolution of contemporary Balkan-linked terrorist plots is the gradual substitution of traditional North African operatives for “second generation” European Muslim converts and Bosnian “reverts” – as demonstrated quite vividly in the failed U.K. embassy terror plot in Sarajevo. This ominous development heralds an entirely new set of security concerns for Western policymakers, both inside and far beyond the borders of the Balkan Peninsula.

Notes 1 Engelberg, Stephen. “One Man and a Global Web of Violence.” New York Times. January 14, 2001. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/world/14JIHA.html. 2 Miller, Judith. “A Witness Against Al Qaeda Says the U.S. Let Him Down.” New York Times. June 3, 2002. 3 Engelberg. “One Man and a Global Web of Violence.” 4 Interview with Hudhaifa Azzam by Steven Emerson and Khalid Duran. October 21, 1993. 5 Al-Banyan, Hasin. “Saudi ‘Afghan’ Talks About Involvement With al-Qa’ida, BinLadin, Related Topics.” Al-Sharq al-Awsat. November 25, 2001. 6 Ibid. 7 FBI Transcript of conversation involving Omar Ahmad Ali Abdel Rahman, “Muhammad” LNU, and two unidentiﬁed males. March 20, 1993. United States v. Omar Ahmad Ali Abdel Rahman et al. S3 93 Cr. 181(MBM). Government Exhibit 7057. Page 11. 8 Evans, Kathy. “Pakistan clamps down on Afghan Mojahedin and Orders Expulsion of Arab Jihad Supporters.” Guardian (London). January 7, 1993. Page 7. 9 FBI Transcript of conversation between Emad Salem and Siddig Ibrahim Siddig Ali. United States v. Omar Ahmad Ali Abdel Rahman et al. S3 93 Cr. 181(MBM). Government Exhibit 641-1T. Pages 19–21. 10 Sammakia, Nejla. “Government Uneasy As Fundamentalists Rally To Cause of Bosnian Brethren.” Associated Press. September 26, 1992. 11 “Review of the Information on Activities of the Persons from Afro-Asian Countries Directly Before the War and During the War in the Territory of BIH Republic.” Report written by the BIH Administration of the Military Security Service– Department for Analytical and Informative Affairs.” Sarajevo. May 6, 1995. 12 “Disruption of the enemy’s activities.” Memorandum dispatched from Zenica by Colonel Ramiz Dugalic, commander of the Ministry of Defense Security Administration – Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) Security Service Department. Classiﬁed No. 258-33. September 14, 1994. 13 Shaykh Omar Abdel Rahman. “The Inevitability of Jihad for the Solution of our Problems and for the Frightening of the Enemies of God.” Speech given at the Conference on Solidarity with Bosnia/Herzogovina. January 16, 1993. 113

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14 Ibid. 15 Sheikh Abu Ithar. “Sheikh Abu Talal Al-Qasimy, Infatuated With the Pen and the Spear.” Al-Nida’ul Islam. Issue 21; December–January 1997–1998. http://www. islam.org.au. 16 Ibid. 17 “MSANEWS EGYPT UPDATE: June 27, 1995: Zawahiri, Kassim, Ben Laden and the gang . . . and a brotherly gesture from Russia (fwd).” MSANews. June 27, 1995. 18 Italian Division of General Investigations and Special Operations (DIGOS) AntiTerrorism Report. “Searches at the Islamic Cultural Center, Viale Jenner 50, Milano, 6/26/1995.” Dated September 15, 1997. 19 Ibid. 20 Azzam Publications. “The Martyrs of Bosnia: Part I.” PAL/NTSC Format. Length: 150 minutes approximately. 2000. 21 Azzam Publications. “Under the Shades of Swords.” Audiocassette sequel to “In the Hearts of Green Birds.” November 1997. Azzam Recordings; London, UK. 22 United States v. Usama bin Laden, et al. S(7) 98 Cr. 1023 (LBS). United States District Court, Southern District of New York. Trial Transcript, February 21, 2001. Pages 1106–1107. 23 Jean-Louis Bruguière and Jean-François Ricard. “Requisitoire Deﬁnitifaux aux Fins de Non-Lieu. De Non-Lieu partiel. De Requaliﬁcation. De Renvoi devant le Tribunal Correctionnel, de mantien sous Controle Judiciaiare et de maintien en Detention.” Cour d’Appel de Paris; Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris. No. Parquet: P96 253 3901.2. Page 99. 24 Italian Division of General Investigations and Special Operations (DIGOS) AntiTerrorism Report. “Searches at the Islamic Cultural Center, Viale Jenner 50, Milano, 6/26/1995.” Dated September 15, 1997. 25 Azzam Publications. “Under the Shades of Swords.” 26 Italian Division of General Investigations and Special Operations (DIGOS) AntiTerrorism Report. “Searches at the Islamic Cultural Center, Viale Jenner 50, Milano, 6/26/1995.” 27 Azzam Publications. “Under the Shades of Swords.” 28 January 1996 CIA Report on “International Islamic NGOs” and links to terrorism. Page 2. See also Afﬁdavit by Senior Special Agent David Kane (Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security). United States of America v. Soliman S. Biheiri. United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division. Case #: 03-365-A. August 14, 2003. Page 2. 29 Higgins, Andrew and Christopher Cooper. “CIA-backed Team Used Brutal Means to Break Up Terrorist Cell in Albania.” Wall Street Journal. November 20, 2001. 30 Ibid. 31 Azzam Publications. “Under the Shades of Swords.” 32 “Bin Laden Held to be Behind an Armed Algerian Islamic Movement.” Agence France Press (AFP). February 15, 1999; 11:39 GMT. 33 “Interview with Abu Omar Abdul Bir from the Media Wing of the Algerian Salaﬁst Group for Prayer and Combat (GSPC).” Al-Faath. http://www.geocities.com/alfat7_ mag/ft-1.zip. December 2004. 34 Drozdiak, William. “France’s ‘Unwanted’; Alienated Arab Youths Turning to Violence.” Washington Post. November 14, 1995. Page A14. 35 Fisk, Robert. “An Alien ‘Brother’ Fights for Muslims.” Independent (London). July 14, 1993. Page 9. 36 Beganovic, Ezher and Kemal Bakovic. “Commander of the El-Mudzahid Detachment Abu el-Maali: ‘We Did Not Commit War Crimes.’” Saff Magazine. July 8, 2005. Pages 20–23.

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37 Pyes, Craig with Josh Meyers and William Rempel. “Bosnia Seen as Hospitable Base and Sanctuary for Terrorists.” Los Angeles Times. October 7, 2001. 38 Author Interview with Shaykh Abu Hamza al-Masri, Finsbury Park Mosque, 28 June 2002. 39 Azzam Publications. “Under the Shades of Swords.” 40 “Importat [sic] Communique to Muslims.” Armije Republike BH 3, Korpus; Odred “El-Mudzahidin”: Unidentiﬁed communiqué issued by Abu el-Ma’ali, dated September 22, 1995. Islam Report. The American Islamic Group (AIG). September 23, 1995. 41 “Congratulatons [sic] to the Muslim World.” Armije Republike BH 3, Korpus; Odred “El-Mudzahidin”: Unidentiﬁed communiqué issued by Abu el-Ma’ali. Islam Report. The American Islamic Group (AIG). September 25, 1995. 42 United States v. Usama bin Laden, et al. S(7) 98 Cr. 1023 (LBS). United States District Court, Southern District of New York. Trial Transcript, February 6, 2001. Page 296. 43 Italian Division of General Investigations and Special Operations (DIGOS) AntiTerrorism Report. “Searches at the Islamic Cultural Center, Viale Jenner 50, Milano, 6/26/1995.” 44 January 1996 CIA Report on “International Islamic NGOs” and links to terrorism. Page 13. 45 Croatian Radio. Broadcast in Serbo-Croat language in Zagreb. October 20, 1995; 1600 GMT. 46 January 1996 CIA Report on “International Islamic NGOs” and links to terrorism. Page 13. 47 “Egyptian Radical Group Claims Bombing in Croatia.” Associated Press. October 21, 1995. 48 “Jamaa Claims Croatia Bombing, Mubarak Cancels New York Trip.” Deutsche Presse-Agentur. October 21, 1995. 49 Bruguière and Ricard. “Requisitoire Deﬁnitaux aux Fins de Non-Lieu.” Page 160. 50 Azzam Publications. “Under the Shades of Swords.” 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. 54 “One Dead as Mujahedeen Clash with Bosnian Croats.” Agence France Presse. December 14, 1995. 55 Azzam Publications. “Under the Shades of Swords.” 56 Ibid. 57 Beganovic and Bakovic. “We Did Not Commit War Crimes.” 58 Ibid. 59 Excerpted from the will and testament of Shaykh Omar Abdel Rahman, written in an American prison cell. Al-Minhaj. Page 27. http://www.badr.com. Dated: 1997. 60 Direct Examination of Ahmed Ressam. United States v. Mokhtar Haouari. United States District Court Southern District of New York. Case: 00CR15. June 27–July 6, 2001. Page 552. 61 Shaykh Usama bin Muhammed bin Laden et al. “World Islamic Front Statement Urging Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders.” Joint press statement by Shaykh Usamah Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Abu Yasir Rifa’i Ahmad Taha, Shaykh Mir Hamzah, and Fazlul Rahman. February 23, 1998. 62 “Has a New Wave of Terror been Created?” Vjesnik (Zagreb). May 16, 1996. 63 “Three Charged for Car-Bomb Attack.” HINA News Agency (Croatia). December 27, 1997. 64 “Disruption of the enemy’s activities.” (Ramiz Dugalic.)

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65 “Hostage Drama after Five Killed in Police Raids.” Agence France Presse. March 29, 1996. 66 “Reporter’s Transcript of Proceedings.” United States of America v. Ahmed Ressam, aka Benni Noris. United States District Court for the Western District of Washington. Case #: CR 99-666-JCC. Dated April 2, 2001. Page 9–10. 67 Bruguière and Ricard. “Requisitoire Deﬁnitaux aux Fins de Non-Lieu.” Page 109. 68 Dahlburg, John-Thor. “‘Holy Warriors’ Brought Bosnians Ferocity and Zeal.” Los Angeles Times. August 6, 1996. Page A11. 69 Higgins and Cooper. “CIA-Backed Team Used Brutal Means.” 70 Sharaf-al-Din, Khalid. “Fundamentalists’ Leaders Formed Bogus Organizations to Confuse the Security Organs.” Al-Sharq al-Awsat (London). March 7, 1999. Page 6. 71 “Al-Sharq Al-Awsat Publishes Extracts from Al-Jihad Leader Al- Zawahiri’s New Book.” Al-Sharq al-Awsat (London). December 2, 2001. Page 6. 72 “Islamic Jihad Vows Revenge.” Al-Hayat (London). August 6, 1998. 73 Ryan, Kelly. “From Milan to Madrid to Montreal: the World-Wide Web of Terror.” Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC). Originally aired: December 14, 2001. 74 Gatti, Fabrizio. “1995: From Milan a Car Bomb Leaves for Fiume.” Corriere della Sera (Italy). November 11, 2001. 75 McGrory, Daniel. “Bin Laden Aide Arrested in Bosnia.” The Times (London). October 11, 2001. 76 Ibid. 77 Habul, Emir. “Reactions in South East Europe to the Attacks on 11 September.” AIM (Alternative Information Network) Press. http://www.aimpress.org. October 22, 2001. 78 “Government’s Evidentiary Proffer Supporting the Admissibility of Co-Conspirator Statements.” United States of America v. Enaam M. Arnaout. United States District Court Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. Case #: 02 CR 892. January 31, 2003. Page 74. See also “Government’s Response to Defendant’s Position Paper as to Sentencing Factors.” United States of America v. Enaam M. Arnaout. United States District Court Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division. Case #: 02 CR 892. Page 38. 79 “Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Kosovo): International Ofﬁcials Flout International Law.” Amnesty International. September 1, 2002. http://web.amnesty.org/library/ index/engeur700082002. 80 Author interview with Shaykh Abu Hamza al-Masri, Finsbury Park Mosque, June 28, 2002. 81 Karup, Dzenana. “Qur’an is Our Constitution.” Dani (Sarajevo). March 30, 1998. http://www.bhdani.com/arhiva/72/tekst172.htm. 82 Ibid. 83 “Transcript – Press Conference.” Coalition Press Information Center; Tito Barracks. January 30, 2003; 11:30am. SFOR Stabilization Force. http://www.nato.int/sfor/ trans/2003/t030130a.htm. 84 “Press Release: Detention of Man Surveilling SFOR.” SFOR Stabilization Force. November 18, 2002. http://www.nato.int/sfor/trans/2002/p021118a.htm. 85 “NATO Says its Prisoner in Bosnia is Linked to al-Qaida.” Associated Press. December 3, 2002. 86 “Fijuljanin: ‘Americans Threatened to Turn Me Over to Russians.’ ” Saff Magazine. February 18, 2003. 87 Ibid. 88 “Terrorekspert: Kobenhavn vigtig by for al-Qaeda-krigere.” Politiken (Denmark). November 22, 2005. 89 Pyes, Craig with Josh Meyers and William Rempel. “Bosnia Seen as Hospitable Base and Sanctuary for Terrorists.” Los Angeles Times. October 7, 2001.

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90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98

Bruguière and Ricard. “Requisitoire Deﬁnitaux aux Fins de Non-Lieu.” Page 225. Ibid. Page 139. Ibid. Page 140. Beganovic and Bakovic. “We Did Not Commit War Crimes.” “Serbia Holds Madrid Bomb Suspect.” BBC News. August 17, 2005. Ibid. “Arrest May Indicate Balkans-Al Qaeda Link.” Associated Press. August 29, 2005. http://www.cypos-internet-plus.de/ftp/incoming/100mb.wmv. December 4, 2004. “Winds of Victory.” Propaganda ﬁlm released by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Al-Qaida faction in Iraq. July 2004. See also “Al-Qaida in Iraq’s Distinguished Martyrs Series: Abu Usama al-Maghribi.” http://www.alhesbah.org/v/showthread.php?t=36665. October 23, 2005.

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6 ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY IN POST-DAYTON BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA Peter Stoett

Long-term security concerns must include the environmental health of postconﬂict regions. This is often considered a secondary issue, one that will receive increased attention as political and economic development proceeds. However, there are several reasons why the ecological condition of a post-conﬂict area is, on the contrary, of principal concern, including the limitations presented by damaged ecosystems, the health threats posed by environmental harm, and the prospect that cooperation towards environmental policymaking can act as a platform for further conciliatory efforts. There are indeed two sides to this coin, one negative and one positive. While it is clear that warfare and economic disruption can have deleterious environmental impacts, the latter can actually serve to give local ecology respite from the more harmful impacts of badly regulated industrialization, while the neofunctionalist argument suggests that former adversaries can build broader, and perhaps deeper, relationships as they cooperate toward enhancing environmental protection. At the same time, however, we must be realistic in our assessment of such situations: the Bosnian case indicates that conﬂict resolution can often hamper future environmental policy development. The Dayton arrangements, while perhaps necessary from a political perspective in 1995, greatly hamper the development of a state-wide and foreign environmental policy, at a time when it is obvious that the future human security of Bosnians is dependent on the acceptance of environmental regulation. This chapter will begin with a discussion of the analytic concept of environmental security. I will then offer a brief overview of related concerns in both the Balkans and Bosnia-Herzegovina in particular, followed by a discussion of present and future dilemmas. We will ﬁnd that the war had a mixed impact on the ecology of the region: while it caused much damage, and left a corresponding legacy, it also allowed a brief respite from the harm that was being inﬂicted by a rapidly deregulated, in many respects deteriorating, industrial infrastructure which had little merit in terms of environmental impact assessment. 118

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There remains some controversy over the exact level of environmental damage caused by the civil war in Bosnia, the larger Balkans conﬂagration, and, perhaps most infamously, the extent of damage inﬂicted by western bombing raids, including the use of depleted uranium shells. But it is quite plausible to argue that the more serious threat to environmental security in the Balkans as a whole is the recovery of the industrial economy, and future projects, such as hydropower developments, that may proceed without adequate environmental impact assessment unless this is demanded by both the international community and Bosnian civil society groups. At the same time, rehabilitation and development efforts are encouraging cross-ethnic cooperation, as is the prospect of EU accession. Ultimately however it is far too early to arrive at an optimistic forecast for the region and Bosnia in particular, since the normative context for environmental concern remains at a low ebb, perhaps the lowest in Europe, and security concerns are so pervasively linked to ethnicity. The political reality imposed by the Dayton Agreements – put simply, the presence of two states within one, linked with a weak federal structure with limited inﬂuence, and continued reliance on external actors for legitimacy and funding – limits the possibilities for adequate environmental protection standards aimed at redressing extant problems or proactively curtailing future threats to environmental security. Further, the ﬂedgling character of the civil society agents, who must operate in a shadow economy with limited employment prospects, further debilitates the development of a strong environmental ethic or policy legitimacy.

The great undeﬁned: security in the post-Cold War era There is little need to rehash the quickly tiring debate over the meaning of environmental security at length here, and a fast overview will sufﬁce. Two ﬁelds of study intersect to form ecopolitics: environmental science and policy studies. At the level of international relations (IR) this was a curious development, since the study of IR has traditionally been about state security, and not the welfare of either individuals or non-human biota. By the post-Vietnam era the older security agenda, ensconced in geopolitical thought, could no longer ignore the role played by natural resources and the environment, though one could argue such concerns have always permeated strategic studies, where we ﬁnd the most immediate and non-controversial connection between the environment and security: one cannot conceive of a defensive or offensive military campaign without taking the environment seriously, as an obstacle, or target (the latter effort, ecocide, has proven popular throughout history, and could be argued is a staple of warfare). However, the debate would extend far beyond this rudimentary linkage, buttressed by the emergence of a new complex ﬁeld broadly labeled global environmental politics, and a newfound concern with environmental safety questions among comparative politics analysts following the fall of communism.1 Arguably, international relations theory has always 119

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been infused, and perhaps even based upon, some conception of ecological order and promise, though this has been a late admission in the discipline.2 The importance of events such as the gas leak in Bhopal, the oil spill off Alaska, and the meltdown at Chernobyl made human tragedy and human-induced natural disaster undeniable issues for scholarly evaluation. In the 1970s, it became obvious that the deﬁnition of security needed to be expanded to include threats to natural resources (such as water supplies) posed by human activity, and not just military attack.3 This was underlined in the 1980s with the recognition of truly global threats to the atmosphere, and coincided with broader efforts, from critical international political economy, political geography, sociology, and other ﬁelds, to move the common focus of security studies away from military preoccupations and, for some, away from the state itself. The arguments for this movement, roughly, suggested not only that the dominant stress on military matters limited analytic focus and thus risked missing other threats to humanity, but also that there was self-fulﬁlling prophecy in the act of fretting over military attack, and the subsequent reﬂexive policy prescription of war preparation/militarism.4 Meanwhile those concerned with human rights on the one hand, and those who pursued global models of political order on the other, both demanded a discontinuation of state-centricity within the IR discipline as a whole.5 Later, of course, non-traditional security concepts would be embraced by states such as Canada, and supra-national entities such as the EU, interested in re-inventing post-Cold War policy.6 But in its initial stages the challenge to the legitimacy of the state was an integral aspect of the movement to redeﬁne security. Subsequently, however, the disintegration of states such as Yugoslavia would raise their own sets of related concerns, and the environmental policy-building process would be seen as a possible route toward state-building as well. Natural resources are a fundamental component of the state-building exercise, in both economic and legal terms; subsequently, their adequate protection from ruinous policies (or unregulated economic activity) is certainly a security concern, both in the domestic and foreign policy context.7 Environmental concerns lent themselves to these reformist intellectual strains with great convenience, though to be fair one could also argue that the genuine socio-political questions raised by a deepening ecological crisis challenged orthodox conceptions of legitimacy in both domestic and international spheres, and in both capitalist and central command economies. And so two strains developed in the late 1980s and 1990s: those who thought the main problem was the lack of explicit recognition accorded to environmental problems when viewing national security concerns; and those who felt the environment was yet another factor ﬁt to diminish the inordinate focus security studies placed on the state in the ﬁrst place. The two converged on occasion in the area of militarism and the environment, and especially the observation and prediction of so-called “environmental conﬂicts.”8 But it would become apparent that this divide would stretch further as the gap between traditional and critical security studies continued in the 1990s. 120

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Indeed one might argue that security is a term best left undeﬁned, so as to avoid the inevitable semantic confusion when it is employed in varying contexts, and at different times. For Americans, and especially in the post-September 11 context, national security has come to mean countering anything resembling potential terrorist attack. However, we still see statements such as this one, by Maurice Strong, on a regular basis: “We have never faced a security challenge as great and pervasive as the one we face today through our excessive impact on the earth’s environment and life systems.”9 Arguably, encouraged by empirical events, such as catastrophic oil spills, the near-extinction of popular species, and the gradual awareness of biospheric threats, environmental concerns have permeated all aspects of security studies. However, there is little published work that links security and environment in the Balkan context, and this is unfortunate. The Bosnian situation exposes a major tension within the environmental security literature: in order to protect the natural systems in the region, it can be reasonably asserted we need strong states; it can also be asserted, however, that states have traditionally been part of the environmental problem, and only reluctantly are they made part of the solution. We can also see that, in the Bosnian and Serbian cases, serious political obstacles (questions of governance, authority, legitimacy, enforcement, etc.) to the development of environmental security policies exist. The damage caused by civil warfare has been largely contained, but we need to step beyond this to understand the contemporary context. This forces us into the conceptual realm of national security issues as well.

Environmental security and national security If national security is the key to understanding national interest, and if the former is taken to mean freedom from external threat, it is self-evident that resources are key determinants. Leaving aside the endless debate over the relative signiﬁcance of economic and military power, neither is possible without access to adequate (indeed, if such a thing is even possible) levels of natural resources. This applies not only to so-called “resource dependent” economies, but also to states dependent on natural resources elsewhere. Bosnia is well endowed in terms of many mineral and especially hydrologic resources, but the distribution of their beneﬁts will be a major factor in the future viability of the state, as well as of its two Entities. One causal path might summarize the dominant extant literature: environmental insecurity is caused by resource scarcity. In a milestone essay published almost a decade ago, Thomas Homer-Dixon identiﬁed three ways humans cause a scarcity of renewable resources. According to Homer-Dixon, it is the combination of these three which comprises environmental scarcity. The ﬁrst is a decrease in the quality and quantity of renewable resources at higher rates than they are naturally renewed (supply-induced scarcity); the second is increased population growth or per capita consumption (demand-induced scarcity); and 121

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the third is unequal resource access (structural scarcity). The impact of resource scarcity can be felt as a result of decreased agricultural production, decreased economic productivity, population displacement, and disrupted institutions and social relations. Given the relationship between conﬂict and resource scarcity, it is clear that environmental security is an important feature of current social, economic, and political trends.10 Both the distribution of beneﬁts and disputes over ownership and access will be central questions as Bosnia gradually becomes an investment magnet for resource extraction and utilization. In an alarming article, Robert Kaplan argued that the environment is the national security issue of the early twenty-ﬁrst century, pointing to the political and strategic impact of surging populations, spreading disease, deforestation and soil erosion, water depletion, air pollution, and, possibly, rising sea levels which will lead to mass migrations and increasing group conﬂicts. Water, he argues, will be in dangerously short supply in areas like Saudi Arabia, Central Asia, and the southwestern United States. Wars could potentially erupt over access to fresh water and over damming of different parts of rivers. People living in low-lying areas – more than one billion people or 20 percent of the world’s population – will be forced to move if waters rise as a consequence of global warming (this could have an impact on Croatia’s Adriatic Coast, for example). The natural environment could therefore be considered one of the causes of violent conﬂict in the southern hemisphere and elsewhere, and should be examined for its potential to cause conﬂict in other parts of the world.11 Though it is difﬁcult to argue this was related to the main causes of war in the Balkans, as we shall see, there will be scarcity-related issues in the future which, combined with weak state structures and continued ethnic hostility, could well spark violence in the future. However, environmental security can be understood beyond reference to environmental degradation as a source of conﬂict and thus a threat to the security of the state. Most obviously, environmental insecurity can refer to the impact of military activities in preparation for war or in the conduct and aftermath of war, or what is more commonly termed ecocide.12 Environmental security can also challenge how we understand the broader impact of environmental change on the human environment. As Thakur notes, environmental factors are catalysts of war, whether or not they directly cause war. Since a state’s ability to respond to environmental scarcity depends on its capacity to deal with change and ability to adapt to environmental problems, environmental security is “embedded in the broader social, political and economic context” of that country.13 This needs to be clearly reﬂected in post-conﬂict redevelopment planning in areas such as the Balkans. Interstate conﬂict can also be caused or exacerbated by environmental disruption. Many refugees leave their country of origin as a result of environmental disruptions that threaten their existence or seriously affect the quality of their life.14 Examples of causes of such disruptions include earthquakes, avalanches, ﬂoods, and drought. Conﬂict-oriented disruptions include problems pertaining to 122

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destroyed food crops and the presence of landmines in ﬁelds and forests on which people depend for their livelihoods. All of this can diminish the capacity of state survival, present challenges to state legitimacy, and present tough obstacles for aid agencies and local NGOS alike. Obviously, these are important concerns in the context of the Balkans, where the legacy of the wars of the early to mid-1990s include disrupted agricultural production, physical and psychic injuries related to landmines and booby trap explosions, and the continued presence of mines and unexploded ordinance. Military activities also contribute to environmental insecurity. Examples of military activities and their impact on the environment include scorched earth policies, the dumping of toxic chemicals, oil spills, and disrupted water ﬂows. The extent to which military personnel and facilities are allocated to monitor environmental change and protect regions from environmental degradation is expected to increase as natural resources continue to dwindle. Protecting these resources is a job increasingly being taken up by the military. The idea of directly linking the environment to security concerns was clearly articulated by Peter Gleick, who identiﬁed what he feels are primary environmental threats to security, all relevant to resource studies. Resource acquisitions are strategic goals in themselves, often attacked as part of military strategy; resources can be utilized as military tools; and, ﬁnally, various disruptions to environmental services, such as water supply, are obvious threats to the well-being of citizens, as those who survived the siege of Sarajevo are only too well aware.15 Indeed a body of literature dealing speciﬁcally with the environmental impact of warfare and related international law began to grow in the 1970s and 1980s.16 A critical analysis of the links between military aggression and environmental decay, and the social dimension of both, is more easily navigated in the waters of critical security studies. The study of environmental security from a national security viewpoint immediately encourages a research agenda familiar to those engaged in the broader ﬁeld of security/strategic studies today. Analyses would be limited to issues that involve foreign and domestic policy decisions, either as initiatives or reactions to scarcity and ensuing political conﬂict. Typical, and standardized, problems of conﬂict and cooperation will form the base of methodological decision-making: game theory problems and veriﬁcation dilemmas, common pool resource problems, the social construction of threats, and other variations on the theme of state survival. An explicitly normative dimension, as the preceding constructivist inclusion suggests, is certainly apparent. All of this is ﬁne, but there is also room for arguing that what is needed – and, to some extent, what emerges in the case study below – is good old-fashioned environmental policy analysis, a catalogue of threats to environmental security, discussions of the political possibilities for and obstacles to curtailing those threats, and the relation of these dynamics to the political culture and ecological prognosis of the society and state, as well as its surrounding political and ecological neighborhood. At a bare minimum, assuming we can move safely beyond the basics of 123

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territorial integrity and economic prosperity, we need to conceptualize sustainable development as a goal of national security, as an operating principle of conﬂict rehabilitation efforts. Yet this is impossible to deﬁne without normative postulation. In the normative sense, then, the ultimate goal of environmental security is national sustainable development, a term open to multiple simultaneous deﬁnitions. Raymond Mikesell offers a relatively precise deﬁnition: “the maintenance of the natural resource base, including the waste absorptive capacity of the environment, for the use of future generations so that their opportunities to maintain or advance their well being are undiminished.”17 We can accept this as a bare minimum should Bosnians wish to move out from under the shadow of war and advance their condition in a post-Dayton world.

Bosnian environmental security We will not revisit the events leading to the often-violent disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, nor the civil war in Bosnia, in any detail here; this is well covered in numerous other publications, including chapters in this book.18 It is important to stress, however, that there is no consensus in the scholarly community as to who, or what, is clearly to blame. We can, with some certainty, eliminate the idea that conﬂict over scarce natural resources was at the heart of the matter. This is signiﬁcant, from the viewpoint of environmental security studies. However, we shall soon return to this theme, since resource scarcity, in particular water resources, could play a much larger role in the future of the Balkans in general and Bosnia in particular. While many have argued that the structural adjustments made necessary by Yugoslavia’s debt crisis of the 1980s led to internal strife between ethnic groups, it cannot be reasonably argued that this was the impact of natural resource exports or a concerted policy by the west to fracture Yugoslavia in order to attain them.19 It could be argued, however, that such emphasis on rapid industrialization, which was of course a common theme in the Soviet bloc but a more controlled process in Tito’s Yugoslavia, cemented a legacy of inadequate environmental protection standards in all the Republics.20 Bosnia and Herzegovina’s borders contain 51,209 square kilometers of some of the most beautiful land in Europe, interspersing rough mountainous and forested territory with ﬂat fertile plains. The Sava is the main river, and its tributaries, including the Bosna, Una, Drina, and the Vrbas, all ﬂow to the north, dividing the land in sections that are often reﬂected in political demarcations as well. Indeed, Bosnia lies in the Sava valley while Herzegovina is in the Neretva river basin and the upper reaches of the Drina. Forests and woodlands comprise some 40 percent of the country; only 5 percent is devoted to permanent crops. Mineral deposits include bauxite, salt (in the Tuzla region), manganese, silver, lead, zinc, copper, iron ore, chromium, and coal.21 There are 110 discovered coal deposits; the Sase mine near Srebrenica has an annual production of 6,500 tons of lead, 4,000 tons of zinc, and eight tons of silver; its production affects the Drina River as well as local water sources.22 124

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As with other states in the region, the war had mixed results. It certainly caused signiﬁcant destruction, in both rural and urban areas. “During the war about 45% of its industrial plants, including about 75% of its oil reﬁneries, were destroyed, damaged, or plundered. The transport infrastructure suffered similar destruction and approximately 35% of the main roads and 40% of the bridges were damaged or destroyed.”23 As of the fall of 2004, no effective national railroad was operative. In some cases wartime damage allowed embattled ecosystems signiﬁcant recovery stages; for example, the Zenecka River was highly polluted in the pre-war stage, but is a relatively clean river in the post-war era. Similarly, air quality has improved in many areas, most noticeably Zenica, Tuzla, Kakanj, Doboj, and Jayce, though re-industrialization presents similar threats to human health. Nonetheless, Bosnia has actually experienced a net loss in population since the peak of 4,377,033 in 1991; according to the Agency for Statistics it stood at 3,798,000 in 2001 (an accurate census has not been carried out since the war, and would be difﬁcult to achieve because of divided political authority and relocated populations). Of course, according to most estimates, over 200,000 were killed in the war; but many others ﬂed the country. There are still (2004) some 350,000 internally displaced persons, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Many Bosnians suffer from war-related injuries, including physical challenges and post-traumatic stress disorder, which has been linked back to physical problems as well.24 This is perhaps most alarming with regard to the impact of the war on children, many of whom are already assuming leadership roles in areas of governance and security provision today.25 However, the environmental impact was limited by the nature of warfare in the region, which tended to consist of fairly precise bombardments as opposed to large-scale ecocide.26 People in besieged areas, most famously Sarajevo, resorted to exploiting local wildlife and fauna for livelihood; trees were destroyed for heating fuel, for example. Temporary refugee camps resulted in similar waves of natural destruction, though the type of onslaught witnessed in Zaire after the Rwandan genocide was avoided. Landmines, however, caused substantial damage to ﬁelds, buildings, and public service utilities. Some 8 percent of Bosnia and Herzegovina remains mined as late as 2005, not only endangering human life and preventing the full redeployment of the agricultural workforce but also retarding the growth of eco-tourism.27 Ironically, a serious hazardous waste problem emerged because of relief efforts, as some “1,000 tons of expired pharmaceuticals left over from wartime donations are a particular waste problem.”28 Munitions have littered many of the battleﬁelds, but one of the more alarming cases was that of depleted uranium. In both Serbia and Iraq, use of depleted uranium by United States forces is often considered a serious health threat. This became a concern to Bosnians since depleted uranium was used in the shelling of certain Serb targets towards the end of the war: some eleven sites were attacked by A-10 planes using 30 mm depleted uranium ammunition in 125

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1994–1995. In particular, uranium contamination has been found at three sites: the Hadzici tank repair facility, the Hadzici ammunition storage area, and the Han Pijesak barracks. An extensive UNEP survey found the ﬁrst-ever recorded instance of depleted uranium contamination of groundwater. However, the ﬁndings of the UNEP Balkans Task Force suggest that contamination is minimal, though precaution and greater public awareness are both strongly encouraged. The Task Force’s ﬁndings have been contested by some local politicians and doctors who link high cancer rates with the shelling.29 Studies have also been conducted on the exposure to uranium of peacekeepers in the region.30

Broader environmental security concerns One might argue that the real threat to environmental security comes not from war damage, but from the lack of regulatory law and process in the post-war period. Indeed, if one word could be used to describe Bosnia’s current environmental predicament, that word would have to be “waste.” This term applies in numerous senses. Valuable agricultural land is wasted because of mine infestation. There is a crisis with regard to solid and hazardous waste disposal, and this affects both ecosystemic and human health, and usurps valuable policy development time.31 For example, much of the discussion at a recent high-level meeting of ministers centered on waste management contracts.32 But there is also waste due to inefﬁciency; it is estimated that leakage wastes up to an astounding 70 percent of the total running water. Much of this is due to infrastructure damage caused by the war, but wasteful practices are also responsible. This is similarly the case with air pollution, since standards remain abysmal in many urban areas such as Banja Luka and Gacko. There have been little if any studies of pollution caused by transportation, but a quick visit to the country will convince the most casual observer that fuel efﬁciency and pollution control is not a priority.33 Unfortunately, the Dayton Agreement contains no provisions for environmental policy. It endorses the State Constitution, adopted on 1 December 1995, and there is nothing in the Constitution that directly involves environmental policy, so it is generally assumed to fall within the jurisdiction of the Entities.34 This puts the environmental question in a curious context: since it is impossible to effectively monitor ecological conditions at the Entity level, the Dayton arrangement discourages the pursuit of environmental security in post-war Bosnia. If it is to be linked thematically to national security, it will take several years, if not decades, of concerted effort by the constitutionally hampered federal authorities and the sustained encouragement (or, even, demands) of external aid suppliers. We might draw a preliminary lesson from this development and suggest that future peace agreements such as those arrived at through Dayton should strive to include environmental policy governance mechanisms, though this omission is no doubt understandable given the gravity of the situation facing the negotiators and the prolonged nature of the war (not to mention 126

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western guilt over lack of serious interventionary measures prior to and up to the Srebrenica massacres). Despite this omission, however, there has been considerable progress made at the inter-Entity and state level. The Inter-Entity Steering Committee for the Environment was established in 1998; and the National Steering Committee for Environment and Sustainable Development was created in 2002. Both Entities have drafted (with ﬁnancial assistance from Community Assistance for Reconstruction, Development and Stabilization (CARDS)) sets of environmental laws, which are fairly consistent with each other and with EU directives, adopted in Republika Srpska in 2002 and the Federation in 2003.35 The state-level Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, which was adopted in February 2004, identiﬁes most of the priorities found in the preceding National Environmental Action Plan, including water resource management and waste-water treatment, rural development, protection of biodiversity, demining, and others. However, “according to some observers, there are differences of opinion between the two Entities on the role of the State in environmental protection [this is along predictable lines], and the Paper does not provide sufﬁcient arguments in favor of environmental protection and sustainable development.”36 Beyond these differences, the capacity for effectively monitoring law and policy simply does not exist. Few general laws have been translated into enforceable bylaws, and there is a dearth of environmental inspectorates at the state and Entity levels. This assumes heightened importance because of Bosnia’s membership in several global environmental treaties, such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. One of the Regional Environmental Center (REC) for Central and Eastern Europe’s more interesting projects is the Balkan Environmental Regulatory Compliance and Enforcement Network, but ofﬁcials there concede it is much easier to make inroads in the former eastern bloc states than it is in Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro, or Albania.37 Finally, since Bosnia borders both Croatia and Serbia and Montenegro, it would be short-sighted to neglect the broader implications of regional environmental security in the Balkans for Bosnia.38 The rivers and streams that run into and out of Bosnia are but one reason for this; others include the transportation of nuclear and other hazardous waste, the numerous transborder areas with sensitive wildlife, shared agricultural dilemmas, and similar policy infrastructure dilemmas. Various riparian disasters have inspired efforts to develop greater regional coordination.39 From a political viewpoint, however, the most important factor is the inextricably linked nature of the post-Yugoslav Balkans is that cooperation amongst the former Republics is vital and promises to assert greater stability in the region as a whole if it is successfully integrated with post-war development efforts. It can also help attract funding from institutions interested in regional initiatives, such as the REC and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) of the World Bank. Failure in this sector, which is as likely, would threaten stability. 127

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Discussion Several comments may be made at this point regarding the complex linkages between the environment and security in Bosnia. First of all, it is fair to acknowledge that, given the many other threats to personal security Bosnians face, and the surprisingly positive assessment of environmental conditions despite years of civil war and perhaps because of de-industrialization, it is a difﬁcult task to put ecology at the forefront of policy or even civil society concerns. There is certainly a dedicated corps of environmentalists with a holistic vision of ecological health, from Zagreb to Sarajevo to Belgrade, but they will not have a signiﬁcant impact on popular thought until there is more conceptual room, amongst both the Balkan people and foreign investors, for such ideas. Resources will be the key linkage point, since the area is certainly not regarded, either locally or internationally, as without value. Water will be essential, for a number of reasons. The rivers play an important role in geopolitical territorialism at the micro level, a theme to which I return below. The crossborder river systems are natural conduits for drug, arms, and people smuggling. Many local communities derive their livelihood from rivers, either through ﬁshing activities or tourism. Perhaps most importantly, however, there is great hydroelectric power potential in Bosnia, which has only begun to be realized. A Kyoto-based EU energy policy will encourage both investments in non-greenhouse gas electricity production (through Joint Implementation and the Clean Development Mechanism) as well as the possible import of hydroelectric power. (One model for Bosnia might be Laos, which derives most of its foreign exchange through power exports to Thailand.) Already there are several highly controversial hydro dam projects in the works, giving rise to new tensions amongst local inhabitants, foreign and local investors, state and Entity governments, and environmental groups. Beyond this friction, there is the broader concern that Bosnia may in effect become a resource basin for Europe, without a truly Bosnian identity based on economic self-sufﬁciency. The Inter-Entity Commission for Water, which is supposed to assume responsibility for cooperation on all water management issues, will be one of the more challenging places to work in post-Dayton Bosnia. Early assessments are emerging on the implications of the two-Entity arrangement. They range from outright condemnation of the recognition of ethnic cleansing (“the apartheid-like logic of international diplomacy’s political anthropology”), to a respectful acceptance of on-the-ground realities in 1995, to calls for the addition of a Croat Entity and other creative, and always contentious, suggestions.40 Bioregionalists argue that cartographic solutions are inferior to political boundaries reﬂecting natural divisions and thus communities. While many of Bosnia’s cantons reﬂect river basins and mountain ranges, there are no serious efforts to overcome the ethnic divisions found within them, and between the two Entities, based on geophysical similarities. In the long term this holds some promise, however. There is, of course, much more to security than 128

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the maintenance of formal borders. Indeed, as Ruby Gropas and others have suggested, it is the “informal borders” that provide the best vantage point for the provision of soft security and the development of security communities; Gropas contrasts the efforts to create hard ﬁxed borders with “the reality of borders that are contested, permeable, blurred, simply disregarded or uncertain.”41 The InterEntity Steering Committee for the Environment, for example, must navigate through both formal and informal borders in its efforts to coordinate policies. And it is of course difﬁcult to conceive how state ofﬁcials could effectively monitor the River Drina, the natural border between Republika Srpska and Serbia, when some Serbs do not consider this a border in the ﬁrst place. There is a paradox regarding European integration and Southeast Europe; while the EU was established and is even deﬁned by the increasing permeability of the internal borders that signify its members, post-Yugoslavia has been deﬁned by contention over borders that, for security reasons (such as drug and weapon smuggling and illegal immigration), are generally perceived as in need of serious strengthening. The Slovenian example aside, this will prove an awkward irony in the future. For example, Croatia’s plans for early accession will doubtless be derailed if Croatian–Bosnian border security is not signiﬁcantly improved. By emphasizing transborder ecological cooperation, as the Regional Environmental Centre is currently attempting to do, international donors can contribute to the border/geophysical space resolution. But it would be disingenuous to argue at this point that such approaches will result in attainment of a magic elixir that can heal wounds. More generally, the relationship with the EU is of course fundamental. EU funding in Bosnia for environmental policy planning and public awareness ran at 1.7 million 2003–2005 (total funding for environment and natural resources stands at 18.3 million, 2000–2004). This is funneled through the CARDS program, with an overall 4.65 billion commitment between 2000 and 2006.42 It is essential that Bosnia ratiﬁes and, no doubt much more problematically, enforces international treaties that will affect regional environmental cooperation as well. These include the Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context, as well as the Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes, and the Convention on Cooperation for the Protection and Sustainable Use of the Danube River. BiH has also signed on to the Mediterranean Action Plan through its Barcelona Convention.43 In general, efforts to incorporate Bosnia’s international commitments have been sporadic at best.44 One of the more promising regional initiatives is the Framework Agreement for the Sava River Basin and Protocol on Navigation in the Sava River Basin of 2003, initiated by the Stability Pact and the REC.45 Its aim is to establish a permanent International Sava River Basin Commission dealing with possibly contentious issues such as irrigation, hydropower, navigation, ﬂood control, ﬁsheries, timber ﬂoating, recreation, and tourism. The Sava is 946 kilometers long, emptying into the Danube at Belgrade. Though it runs through all the Balkan states, Bosnia captures the largest 129

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portion, some 331 kilometers. There is at present a “gentlemanly agreement” that the commission’s seat will be in Zagreb, and that it will foster closer ties with the Danube Commission, UN/ECE, and EU. Again, we should stress the fact that, given the Dayton Agreements effective ethnic partitioning of the country, and the lack of federal powers over environmental policy making, the nexus between international commitment and domestic implementation will remain a strained one, as indeed it is in states such as Canada with federal constitutional arrangements.46 Another area where we might expect some progress is in eco-tourism. There are several conservation parks worthy of anything Europe has to offer, such as the Hutovo Blato wetlands near the estuary of the river Neretva, or the gorgeous Una River near Bihac, and increased political stability will encourage development in the areas of lodging and river rafting, hiking, and ﬁshing. Several eco-tourist operators interviewed by the present author exhibited a cautionary optimism in this regard, suggesting that the development of such enterprises will be counter-productive if Balkan regions are turned into large-scale campsites for vacationing Europeans without clear property rights that beneﬁt local peoples and strict environmental impact assessment.47 Corruption and aid dependency are both obstacles to the development of a genuinely Bosnian ecotourist industry.48 Nonetheless it represents great potential; not only because it is a standing resource that would need large quantities of investment to develop, but also because it generally attracts youthful participants who can then assist in spreading the word that Bosnia is open to increased trafﬁc (wordof-mouth and internet communications are often the most apt manner to attract tourist dollars). It may, however, seem premature to promote this industry in those parts of Bosnia where war damage is still the dominant feature of the human landscape, both in order to prevent “war tourism” (itself a semi-industry in Bosnia today) and because of ongoing disputes about property rights and returnee settlements. On a darker note, criminal activity linked to toxic waste dumping, whether in the form of importing it and dumping it in rural regions or rivers, or allowing it to cross through Bosnia towards Albania or other states, will need to be monitored and disrupted if the environmental health of Bosnia is to improve. Many Bosnian citizens, on condition of anonymity, expressed their concerns with this illicit activity during my stay in Bosnia in the fall of 2004; there is even concern that the Croatian government may be secretly exporting nuclear waste into the region (controversy has been brewing over Croatian plans to locate its nuclear waste dump for several years now). Of course, such concerns are part of a much wider fabric of organized crime that pervades much of the Bosnian, and indeed Balkan, economy, and involves illegal logging and other depletions of natural resources as well as the more familiar weapon, drug, and prostitution rings.49 And, though it should not be exaggerated nor used to vilify any particular ethnic group, the atmosphere for terrorist activity also exists. As the editor of this volume has put it elsewhere: 130

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Substate administrative structures, local communities and institutions, deﬁcient border and document controls, and essentially unmonitored tracts of difﬁcult terrain, have virtually guaranteed access to the kinds of resources that facilitate domestic and international terrorists: funds, false papers, weapons, communications, community-based support, refuge from police and judicial interference, and transhipment capabilities and opportunities.50 It will take considerable courage and resilience to bring to light the linkages between organized crime, terrorism, and environmental destruction, and though government ofﬁcials are often unfairly accused of corruption in Bosnia, it may be somewhat chimerical to anticipate a strong and steady state response to related crime. Just as likely, the impetus may come from the many nongovernmental organizations presently dotting the political landscape across the Balkan states. Indeed, NGOs have come to play key roles in promoting public awareness of environmental security concerns in the Balkan states. The war itself provided stimuli for many non-governmental organizations involved with environmental concerns. Some context may be in order here: there was so little development of civil society in the Balkans that the NGO has been a late addition, and in fact at times represents a scramble for development money as much as anything else. Some groups, however, predated the war, and actually used it to further channel their environmental concerns. An example is Zagreb’s Society for the Improvement of the Quality of Life, which began operations (non-registered) in 1988. Its founder viewed the celebration of Earth Day during the war years as an indirect form of protest. Another group in BiH, Ekof, used a “trees of Sarajevo” campaign in 1997/1998 to restore some of the thousands of trees that were chopped down for ﬁrewood during the siege to promote broader environmental values.51 These and many other examples of civil society mobilization suggest that there is a core of ecological sensitivity amongst people in the region, but groups are small and operate on a purse-string basis, are highly dependent on outside funding, and are considered a radical fringe by the majority of industrialists intent on revamping the economy via resource extraction and the resumption of heavy industry. It would be overly optimistic to suggest Bosnia has a remote chance of emerging as an “environmental state.”52 Indeed, it is rather premature to hope that any state, including those with relatively little internal conﬂict, will play that role in the near future. In the Bosnian case we are hesitant to declare we are even dealing with a “state” in the traditional sense of the word, though I believe it has evolved beyond the caricatures offered by earlier observers.53 So much of the economic activity in Bosnia takes place in the informal sector that it would be ludicrous to suggest the state or Entity governments can effectively regulate it, and privatization is often accompanied by corruption and its attendant territorialism.54 But one can expect the international community to insist that post-Dayton 131

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Bosnia has a more concerted environmental policy infrastructure, and that efforts are made to link civil society with it. This will no doubt be a source of friction as business interests and new policy defenders clash, and friction in Bosnia is easily parlayed into ethnic animosity. The ultimate challenge, which only Bosnians can overcome, will be to avoid this.

Conclusion It is self-evident that the civil war of 1992–1996 caused great environmental damage in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and that it also gave some respite to the damage caused by one of the most antiquated and, post-1985, unregulated industrial infrastructures in Europe. The contemporary challenge is to encourage sustainable development in a region that is hungry for foreign investment and clearly lacks the normative and administrative context for environmental policy creation and implementation. This is not unlike other problems that post-Dayton Bosnians face today. It is fair, perhaps, to speak of two Bosnias in the contemporary sense. One is looking forward, and is dedicated to the twin tasks of making Bosnia a better place for European investment and, ultimately, membership in the European Union, while at the same time recognizing Bosnia’s location in the Islamic world. It is a Bosnia that has hired thousands of young professionals, many of them trained abroad, in order to implement the designs necessary to escape the clutches of internecine warfare; it is also being driven by international agencies, members of NGOs, and educators. The other Bosnia, the one encountered by most visitors, reﬂects entrenched positions of wealth and quasi-feudal economic and even military relationships; it is self-cannibalistic, state capturing, and sees the future as a threat to established (and anointed by Dayton itself) ethnic cleansing and endless corruption. This is what Gropas refers to as the “parallel and particularistic state and economy.”55 No doubt the real Bosnia lies somewhere between the two. Perhaps most importantly for the environment itself, Bosnia needs both to free itself from the second vision described above and to maintain a cautious attitude about foreign investment and development projects that could cause more harm than good, exacerbating latent rivalries and making further Balkanwide prospects dim. The international community can assist by promoting sustainable development, refraining from fuelling both conﬂict and irresponsible industrial development in the process.

Notes This chapter was written as part of a sabbatical term taken in Eastern Europe and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the late summer and fall of 2004. Great thanks are extended to Ned Basic, Professor of International Law at the University of Bihac and Director of the Human Rights and Conﬂict Prevention Centre, for his assistance and companionship during my stay at Bihac; and to Michael Innes for his hospitality in Sarajevo. Research was facilitated by a Concordia University Sabbatical Grant and CEPES funding. An 132

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earlier version of this paper appeared as an issue of CEPES Research Notes. Thanks to Maria Parades for assistance. 1 See A. Westing (ed.), Global Resources and International Conﬂict: Environmental Factors in Strategic Policy and Action, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. A transitional text in this regard was D. Pirages, Global Ecopolitics: The New Context for International Relations, Massachusetts: Duxbury, 1978; on global environmental politics as an emerging ﬁeld of study in the 1970s and 1980s see Barbara Jancar, “Environmental Studies: State of the Discipline,” International Studies Notes, 16/17, 3/1, 1991–1992, pp. 25–26; and K. Litﬁn (ed.), The Greening of Sovereignty in World Politics, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998; A. Hurrell and B. Kingsbury (eds), The International Politics of the Environment, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992; R. Lipschutz and K. Conca (eds), The State and Social Power in Global Environmental Politics, New York: Colombia University Press, 1993; M. Paterson, Understanding Global Environmental Politics: Domination, Accumulation, Resistance, London: Macmillan, 2000; E. DeSombre, The Global Environment and World Politics: International Relations for the 21st Century, London: Continuum, 2002; and for an earlier treatment of environmental security as a concern linked speciﬁcally to rapid political changes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, see J. deBardeleben and J. Hannigan (eds), Environmental Security and Quality After Communism: Eastern Europe and the Soviet Successor States, Boulder: Westview Press, 1995. 2 See Eric Laferrière and Peter Stoett, International Relations Theory and Ecological Thought: Towards a Synthesis, London: Routledge, 1999; and Eric Laferrière and Peter Stoett, International Ecopolitical Theory: Critical Reﬂections, Vancouver: UBC Press, forthcoming. 3 Though most of the academic literature in the mainstream emerged in the 1980s. In particular, see R. Ullman, “Redeﬁning Security,” International Security, 8:1, 1983, pp. 129–153; R. Barrett (ed.), International Dimensions of the Environmental Crisis, Boulder: Westview, 1982; N. Myers, “Environment and Security,” Foreign Policy, 74, 1989, pp. 23–41; J. Tuchman Mathews, “Redeﬁning Security,” Foreign Affairs, 68:2, 1989, pp. 162–177. A bigger splash was made a few years later by Thomas Homer-Dixon, “On the Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conﬂict,” International Security, 16:2, 1991, pp. 76–116, to which we return in our discussion below. 4 This line of thinking is developed in M. Gurtov, Global Politics in the Human Interest, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1988. An earlier example is R. Falk, This Endangered Planet: Prospects and Proposals for Human Survival, New York: Random House, 1971. 5 For a standard read see B. Buzan, People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the post-Cold War Era, 2nd edn, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1991. See also S. Dalby, “Security, Modernity, Ecology: The Dilemmas of Post-Cold War Security Discourse,” Alternatives, 17, 1992, pp. 95–134. 6 See A. Cooper, Canadian Foreign Policy: Old Habits and New Directions, Scarborough: Prentice Hall Allyn and Bacon, 1997, pp. 110–41. 7 See Nico Schrijver, Sovereignty Over Natural Resources: Balancing Rights and Duties, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. An earlier but still important effort was K. Hossain and S. R. Chowdhury (eds), Permanent Sovereignty Over Natural Resources in International Law: Principle and Practice, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984. 8 On this see D. Deudney and R. Matthew (eds), Contested Grounds: Security and Conﬂict in the New Environmental Politics, Albany: SUNY Press, 1999; C. T. Timura, “ ‘Environmental Conﬂict’ and the Social Life of Environmental Security Discourse,” Anthropological Quarterly, 74:3, 2001, pp. 104–113; R. Matthew and T. 133

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9 10

11

12 13 14 15 16

17

18

19 20

Gaulin, “The Ecology of Peace,” Peace Review, 14:1, 2001, pp. 33–39; G. Foster, “Environmental Security: The Search for Strategic Legitimacy,” Armed Forces and Society, 27:3, 2001, pp. 373–395; and C. Ronnfeldt, “Three Generations of Environmental Security Research,” Journal of Peace Research, 34:4, 1997, pp. 473–482. M. Strong, “Beyond Rio: A New Role for Canada,” O.D. Skelton Memorial Lecture, Vancouver, November 10, 1992. T. Homer-Dixon, T. F., “Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conﬂict: Evidence from Cases,” International Security, 19:2, 1994, pp. 4–40. But see D. Deudney, “The Mirage of Eco-war: The Weak Relationship Among Global Environmental Change, National Security, and Interstate Violence,” in I. Rowlands and M. Greene (eds), Global Environmental Change and International Relations, London: Macmillan, 1992, pp. 169–191; and M. Renner, “Environmental Security: the Policy Agenda,” Conﬂict, Security and Development, 4:3, 2004, pp. 313–334. R. Kaplan, “The Coming Anarchy,” Atlantic Monthly, February 1994, pp. 44–76. The jury is still out on whether Kaplan’s pessimism was misplaced or simply premature. However, there is little doubt that shared river resources are a source of strain. See A. Elhance, Hydropolitics in the Third World: Conﬂict and Cooperation in International River Basins, Washington: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1999; and R. Dimitrov, “Water, Conﬂict, and Security: A Conceptual Mineﬁeld,” Society and Natural Resources, 15, 2002, pp. 677–691; J. Bulloch and A. Darwish, Water Wars: Coming Conﬂicts in the Middle East, London: Victor Gollancz, 1993; D. Hillel, Rivers of Eden: The Struggle for Water and the Quest for Peace in the Middle East, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. For an extensive discussion of this term see P. Stoett, Human and Global Security: An Exploration of Terms, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999, pp. 51–72. R. Thakur, “The United Nations and Human Security,” Canadian Foreign Policy, Fall 7:1, 1999, pp. 51–60, 53. See P. Stoett, “Redeﬁning ‘Environmental Refugees’: Canada and the UNHCR,” Canadian Foreign Policy, 26:7, 1994, pp. 29–45. P. Gleick, “Environment and Security: The Clear Connections,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 47:3, 1991, pp. 16–21. See for example H. Almond, “War, Weapons and the Environment,” The Georgetown International Environmental Law Review, 1:2, 1988, pp. 167–198; B. Oxman, “Environmental Warfare,” Ocean Development and International Law, 22:4, pp. 433–437; L. Juda, “Negotiating a Treaty in Environmental Modiﬁcation Warfare: the Convention on Environmental Warfare and Its Impact Upon Arms Control Negotiations,” International Organization, 32:4, 1978, pp. 975–992. R. Mikesell, Economic Development and the Environment: A Comparison of Sustainable Development with Conventional Development Economics, London: Mansell, 1992, p. 6. See also H. Daly, Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development, Boston: Beacon, 1996. See T. Gallagher, The Balkans After the Cold War: From Tyranny to Tragedy, London: Routledge, 2003; B. Denich, “The Spectre of Super-ﬂuity: Genesis of Schism in the Dismantling of Yugoslavia,” in R. Ferguson (ed.), The State, Identity and Violence: Political Disintegration in the Post-Cold War World, London: Routledge, 2003, pp. 177–198. On the IMF-induced austerity measures see S. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, Washington: Brookings Institution, 1995, pp. 47–57. However it is equally clear that the environmental legacy differs across the former Yugoslavia. Kosovo is perhaps the most challenged; but Bosnia and Serbia both have serious problems. Croatia is particularly polluted in heavy industrial

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21

22 23 24

25 26

27

28 29

30 31

areas, but this probably reﬂects the relatively successful resumption of the economy. Slovenia, by most accounts, is the least environmentally damaged of the former republics. Most of this information is taken from what is probably the most comprehensive report on Bosnia’s environment available today: the Economic Commission for Europe’s Committee of Environmental Policy’s, Environmental Performance Reviews: Bosnia and Herzegovina, New York, Geneva: United Nations, 2004, herein after cited as ECE. Center for Environmentally Sustainable Development, et al., Regional Action Plan for Mine Water Pollution Control, Sarajevo, 2003. The Action Plan is funded primarily by Germany. ECE, p. 5. See N. Mehic-Basara and B. Mehic, “Comorbidity of the Stress Reaction and Lung Disease on the Clinical Material During and After the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” International Congress Series, 1241, 2002, pp. 279–289. Bosnia has provided fertile ground for psychologists interested in PTS (post-traumatic stress); see for example S. Dahl, A. Mutapcic, and B. Schei, “Traumatic Events and Predictive Factors for Posttraumatic Symptoms in Displaced Bosnian Women in a War Zone,” Journal of Traumatic Stress, 11:1, 1998, pp. 137–145. See for example, P. Smith, et al., “War Exposure Among Children from BosniaHercegovina: Psychological Adjustment in a Community Sample,” Journal of Traumatic Stress, 15:2, 2002, pp. 147–156. Note however the NATO bombing during the Kosovo campaign had a more sustained impact. DeSombre writes that “NATO bombing in Serbia in April 1999 destroyed fertilizer plants and oil reﬁneries located on a tributary of the Danube river, resulting in ﬁres and the release of petroleum byproducts and other carcinogens into the water. Additional bombs that month released large amounts of PCBs and liquid mercury into other Danube tributaries, both posing severe danger to human life. In neither of these examples was environmental destruction intended, but it certainly resulted.” (DeSombre, The Global Environment, p. 46; see also J. McQueeny Mitric, “Who’s Going to Clean up Serbia?” Washington Post, 9 July 2000, B1. According to the ECE 2004 report, there are 10,000 mineﬁelds, with over 650,000 mines, in the country (70 percent in the Federation, 30 percent in the Republika Srpska). This includes some 1,500 mineﬁelds around Sarajevo. The percentage of civilian victims rose from 21 percent during the war to 78 percent after it. See ECE, pp. 155–157. Ibid., p. 8. UNEP, Depleted Uranium in Bosnia and Herzegovina (revised edition), May 2003; accessed at: http://postconﬂict.unep.ch/publications/BiH_DU_report.pdf. For another view see Ekrem Tinjak, Faruk Boric and Hugh Grifﬁths, “Bosnians Say NATO Bombs Brought ‘Angel of Death’,” IWPR’S Balkan Crisis Report, No. 526, 15 November 2004. See M. May, et al., “Military Deployment Human Exposure Assessment: Urine Total and Isotopic Uranium Sampling Results,” Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, 67:8–10, 2004, pp. 697–714. In 2000, microbiological analyses of 10,496 samples were conducted in public health laboratories; 2,212 (21.1 percent) did not pass basic health standards; chemical analysis conducted on 7,421 revealed a similar failure rate due to high levels of potassium permanganate, nitrites, nitrates, and iron. Note however that these rates are actually lower than those found in 1999 and 1998. Source: Public Health Institute of Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Public Health Institute of Republika Srpska, 2003.

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32 Semi-annual Meeting, Environmental Steering Committee for Bosnia-Herzegovina, Banja Luka, 21 September 2004, attended by the author. 33 Note however that, according to the ECE Report of 2004, and rather astonishingly in the contemporary setting, “the most signiﬁcant indoor air pollutant is tobacco smoke (75–80 percent of the population over 18 smokes).” ECE, p. 151. 34 On the political impact of Dayton, see S. Bose, Bosnia After Dayton: Nationalist Partition and International Intervention, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002; D. Chandler (ed.), Protecting the Bosnian Peace: Lessons From a Decade of Nation Building, Abingdon: Routledge, 2004; R. Kaplan, “International Authority and State Building: The Case of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Global Governance, 10:1, 2004, pp. 53–66; for reﬂections on the broader Balkans resulting from the wars and Dayton, see J. Morton, et al. (eds), Reﬂections on the Balkan Wars: Ten Years After the Break-up of Yugoslavia, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 35 The relevant agency in the Federation is the Ministry of Physical Planning and Environment; in Republika Srpska it is the Ministry of Physical Planning, Civil Engineering and Ecology. 36 ECE, p. 18. 37 The REC, which has emerged as the most important foreign donor agency for the environment in Bosnia, is in Szentendre, Hungary; it is funded chieﬂy by the European Commission. Interviews were conducted there with Robert Nemeskeri, Stephen Stec, and Mira Mileva in October 2004. 38 Bosnia also has a thirteen kilometer coastline along the Adriatic Sea near the town of Neum. 39 See for example S. Stec, T. Jansen, E. Gulacsy, and A. Antypas, “Transboundary Environmental Governance and the Baia Marc Cyanide Spill,” Review of Central and East European Law, 27:4, 2001, pp. 1–50. 40 Quote from D. Campbell, “Apartheid Cartography: the Political Anthropology and Spatial Effects of International Diplomacy in Bosnia,” Political Geography, 18:4, 1999, pp. 395–435. Much of the related literature is picking up on social constructivist themes. See in particular D. Kostovicova, “Republika Srpska and Its Boundaries in Bosnian Serb Geographical Narratives in the Post-Dayton Period,” Space and Polity, 8:3, 2004, pp. 267–287. 41 Ruby Gropas, “Functional Borders, Sustainable Security, and EU-Balkan Relations,” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 4:1, 2004, pp. 49–76. 42 European Communities, The European Union and the Western Balkans: Building the Future Together, Brussels: EU Publications, 2004. 43 See “Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ministries of Environment of RS and FB&H, and UNEP: Mediterranean Action Plan Priority Actions,” Environment and Sustainable Development in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo: Programme Regional Activity Centre (PAP/RAC), 2001. 44 Interview with Jasmina Cˇ engic, lawyer with the REC, at Sarajevo, 24 September 2004. 45 Slavko Bogdanovic, “Good Governance of the Sava Basin: Legal Realities and Practical Prospects,” unpublished paper, Yugoslav Association for Water Law. Also, interview with Stephen Spec, REC, Szentendre, Hungary, September 2004. 46 See for example D. VanNijnatten and R. Boardman (eds), Canadian Environmental Policy: Context and Cases, 2nd edn, London: Oxford University Press, 2002; O.P. Dwivedi, et al., Canada and Sustainable Development: National and International Perspectives, Toronto: Broadview Press, 2001; and many other texts which stress the difﬁculty of harmonizing policy amongst provinces and the federal government of Canada. In the Bosnian case the task is even harder. 47 One NGO member in Zagreb went so far as to say, “beware the lovers of nature, for they can destroy it with their love.” 136

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48 I am especially grateful to Paola Lucchesi, a tour guide in Bihac, for her many insights into eco-tourism’s many challenges in contemporary Bosnia. 49 For more on this, see Chapter 4 by Peter Andreas in this volume. 50 Michael A. Innes, “Terrorist Sanctuaries and Bosnia-Herzegovina: Challenging Conventional Assumptions,” Studies in Conﬂict and Terrorism, 28, 2005, p. 302. 51 Interviews with various NGO members, Zagreb, September 2004, and Sarajevo, October 2004. 52 Term borrowed from S. Frickel and D. Davidson, “Building Environmental States: Legitimacy and Rationalization in Sustainability Governance,” International Sociology, 19:1, 2004, pp. 89–110. 53 Diana Johnstone: “the Bosnian settlement [Dayton] was the ﬁrst experiment in a new model of non-sovereign statelet, run essentially by the new globalization instruments: ofﬁcial organizations such as the IMF (with total authority over the Bosnian economy) and the OSCE (with massive administrative powers) aided by a vast panoply of semi-governmental ‘non-governmental organizations’ which absorbed most of the ‘donations’ and constitute a permanent lobby within the Western countries from which they come for the continuation of such arrangements.” D. Johnstone, Fool’s Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato and Western Delusions, New York: Monthly Review Press, 2003, p. 164. 54 See T. Donais, “The Politics of Privatization in Post-Dayton Bosnia,” Southeast European Politics, 3:1, 2002, pp. 3–19. 55 Gropas, “Functional Borders,” p. 62.

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7 MEDIA AND SECURITY AFTER DAYTON Adam Jones

How have media in Bosnia-Herzegovina contributed to insecurity in a territory ravaged by war and genocide? How have national and international actors – from both the media and political spheres – responded to the murderous insecurity of the early 1990s? What is the role of Bosnian media in the present and future security environment, especially with regard to reducing ethnonational tensions and inﬂuences? And what are the implications of a security framework for Bosnian media workers themselves? This chapter explores the functioning of the Bosnian media in the postDayton era, setting it against the historical backdrop of the Titoist period and the contemporary legacy of the 1992–1995 civil war. I apply a broad security framework, examining the media as both fomenters of insecurity and intercommunal violence, and buttresses of security and western-style democracy. I also employ a human-security perspective that stresses protection of individuals, notably (in this context) journalists and editors. The nature and role of western policy in Bosnia is addressed, since this offers a rare case of protectorate-style management of a media system by the representatives of foreign powers. The theme of media professionalism and its underlying value scheme is also examined, and an attempt made to draw connections to issues of peace and security in postwar Bosnia.1

Media and security: a theoretical perspective Security has traditionally been conceptualized as the preservation of the nationstate from external threat. In the last couple of decades, however, a conception of “human security,” focused on individuals within state boundaries, has gained prominence.2 A key element of these latter perspectives is the nation-state and constituent elites as a source of insecurity rather than guarantor against it. Both these framings will be deployed in this chapter to explain decisions of key actors concerning, directly or indirectly, the Bosnian media sphere. Academic theorizing about mass media and security has explored both posit138

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ive and negative aspects of media functioning. Negatively, the media are held to be important mechanisms of insecurity. By sharpening intercommunal cleavages, fanning the ﬂames of ethnonationalism or class warfare, and degrading public discourse through extremist rhetoric, the media undermine “civil” society and lay a foundation for mass violence. Post-Tito Yugoslavia represents a relatively well-studied case of such destructive media functioning, as do Nazi Germany and Rwanda under Hutu Power.3 Particularly signiﬁcant in the security equation is the institutional “capture” of media organs by agents of hatred and atrocity. The mechanisms of capture are diverse. They often include ideological solidarity and suasion, but always have a strong material component as well. This may extend to direct ownership and management of the media enterprise, but is as likely to be manifested indirectly – through extension of subsidies and advertising revenue. Negative tactics may also be adopted to discipline media organs, if not to capture them outright. Common methods include ﬁnancial pressures, such as advertising boycotts and malicious lawsuits. Nor should the role of intimidation, coercion, and violence be overlooked. In extreme cases, it may force owners and/or staff of a media project to abandon a media institution, paving the way for closure or hostile takeover. The positive side of media functioning in the security equation is also well theorized. Media are viewed as a potentially emancipatory and stabilizing force. They are essential to democratic peacebuilding and intercommunal reconciliation, necessary to a stable security arrangement. This basically liberal framing reﬂects dominant western conceptions of the media: as an emollient for peaceful public debate, a “watchdog” for civil society, and so on. This idealistic framing assumes practical signiﬁcance when it guides powerful actors, as it presently does. Indeed, it is this vision of media functioning (with an added, strongly commercial component) that is hegemonic in global media systems, as market democracy is hegemonic in the political sphere. This is not to deny that many negative elements, closely linked to the phenomenon of authoritarianism, are still prominent in the media and security equation. We will see something of their enduring impact in the analysis that follows. The international dimension of media and security deserves brief mention. In several recent instances, media coverage can be seen to have exerted a strong, even decisive inﬂuence over U.S. and western security policies (the so-called “CNN effect”).4 Another avenue of media inﬂuence over security policy is indirect: media help to foment crises that subsequently threaten international security and stability. Post-September 11, this aspect of media functioning has assumed added signiﬁcance with, for instance, U.S. attempts to undermine and marginalize Al-Jazeera, a media thorn in its side in the Middle East.5 It is reasonable to assume that western countries and agencies monitor the present-day Bosnian media environment in part for signs of Islamist militancy and propaganda; also that western efforts to shape that media environment in part seek to head off the same phenomena.6 139

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Media in ex-Yugoslavia The world’s media systems can be classiﬁed into three broad genres, in ascending order of free and professional functioning. Hard-authoritarian systems feature extensive state vigilance and control. Editors and other key personnel are often appointed directly by the state, or at least hold their posts on state sufferance. Violations of the authoritarian code may be harshly punished, including by injury or death. A bureaucracy of censorship is generally well advanced, though self-censorship may predominate. In soft-authoritarian systems, vigilance and control over the media are more diffused. Varied actors – political, business/corporate, ethnonational – exert inﬂuence over media, although the state is frequently “ﬁrst among equals” in the arrangement. Media have a degree of space (varying widely among national systems) to express professional values, achieve a measure of “objectivity,” and assume a watchdog role vis-à-vis the wider society. In liberal-democratic, market-oriented media systems, direct control by state agents or interest groups is usually replaced by corporate ownership and a commercially-competitive orientation (though Western European systems, for example, generally feature a substantial public sector, as well as party- and union-owned media). Despite the market prominence of a “yellow press” enslaved to commercialism, these systems are characterized by a relatively strong adherence to values of professionalism, objectivity, and advocacy for civil society. As indicated, this is the dominant ideological model – though many soft-authoritarian systems still exist, alongside vestiges of hard authoritarianism (e.g. Cuba, North Korea).7 Within this framework, socialist Yugoslavia clearly stands as a hard-authoritarian media system. It was, however, at the softer end of the hard-authoritarian spectrum, a notion captured by the title of Gertrude Robinson’s book, Tito’s Maverick Media.8 Reﬂecting the relative liberalism of the Tito regime in other spheres (independence from the Soviet bloc, liberalized economic production, freedom of international travel), the media bore only a partial resemblance to the rigidly authoritarian party media of the Eastern Bloc countries. The state maintained a close watch over sensitive subjects domestically, notably the political hegemony of the Yugoslav Communist League. The result was staid coverage and commentary similar to Eastern Bloc media systems. But in a number of other areas – foreign news, sports coverage, culture and entertainment – the Yugoslav press not only far outshone the Soviet Union and its satellites, but compared favorably with the elite press of Western Europe. Robinson captured something of the schizoid character of Yugoslav media during this period, noting that they “had to fulﬁll two seemingly incompatible functions: they transmitted political information as interpreted by the top, and at the same time encouraged economic and cultural comment as seen from the bottom.”9 Thus, if we seek in their hard-authoritarian roots an explanation for Bosnian media’s role in fostering insecurity in the 1990s, we should also recognize this residue of 140

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pluralism and professional functioning, which could serve as a signpost in the new stage of media functioning. One other aspect of the Yugoslav media heritage must be emphasized: its underdevelopment.10 The Yugoslav media infrastructure was in fact quite sophisticated, given the needs of state propaganda and also the relative prosperity of the Yugoslav consumer. However, Yugoslavia still retained a number of politically signiﬁcant trappings of underdeveloped media systems. Most notably, the media environment heavily privileged broadcast over print media, particularly with the relatively high cost of print organs11 and infrastructural constraints on their distribution. The political dictatorship and controlled capital market, meanwhile, precluded the rise of corporate ownership of broadcast infrastructure. Only the state could construct and administer the airwaves. Thus, the structurally inevitable choice of a large majority of Yugoslav media consumers was the genre (broadcast media) most easily and completely captured by state leaders and associated elites. From the late 1980s to the mid-1990s and beyond, the key actors were the new generation of ethnonationalist leaders bent on dissolving the Yugoslav federation on the terms most favorable to their ethnic constituency. Rapidly, the Yugoslav media moved from being partisan buttresses of the socialist order to being rabid mouthpieces of Slobodan Milosevic, Franjo Tudjman, and eventually even Alija Izetbegovic. As Dusan Babic has argued, Yugoslavia “was ﬁrst shattered by aggressive media, and then by guns. . . . The media played a key role in fomenting the ethnic hatred, hate speech, intolerance, xenophobia, racism and related feelings and manifestations that eventually led to war.”12 The consequences for the security of BosniaHerzegovinans, all ex-Yugoslavs, and the Southern European order are well known.

Bosnian media, ethnic mobilization, and civil war Yugoslavia and its successor states thus provide a classic example of the media Forging War, in the title of Mark Thompson’s book. It can be argued that the media’s signiﬁcance is sometimes overstated – not least by media themselves, afﬂicted with an undue sense of self-importance. Regardless, it is this interpretation of media functioning during the Yugoslav war and genocide that has governed international policymaking in Bosnia. International policymaking has, in turn, been decisive in shaping and delimiting the post-war media order in Bosnia. According to David Chandler, “the starting point of the international community’s media strategy has been that the media were largely responsible for the ethnic violence of the war and have since been a major barrier to the implementation of Dayton.”13 With the waning of central power in the Yugoslav federation, the media – as in Russia immediately after the fall of communism – passed through “a time of free, even anarchistic journalism.”14 As noted, media that had once “showed the commonalities of the Yugoslavian people rather than focusing on the 141

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differences”15 were then “captured” by ethnonationalist politicians who used them to rise to power. However, there is no reason to view the media exclusively as dependent variables in the equation. Editors and journalists too were “captured” by nationalist emotions, including patriotism, hatred, and fear. Their hunger for a steady paycheque was another factor driving them eagerly into the arms of new patrons. Both ideological solidarity and material need have remained crucial factors in media functioning during the post-Dayton period. The Bosnian media evolved somewhat differently than their Serb and Croat counterparts, however. Izetbegovic and his SDA lagged behind Milosevic’s SPS and Tudjman’s HDZ in establishing direct dominance over the mass media, as they lagged more generally in fomenting ethnic mobilization and mass violence. For a time, Bosnia preserved itself as a region of ethnonational pluralism. This was reﬂected in political life, administration – and the media. Kemal Kurspahic, editor of the Oslobodjenje daily newspaper in Sarajevo, recalls: Through public debate and working with the new reform-minded political leadership, Bosnian journalists made it a law that the three major media would be nonpartisan; their staff would select the editors and managers based on professional achievements and reputation; their journalists would not actively participate in any political party; and those who accepted a nomination for any public position had to put their work as journalists on hold. . . . Sarajevo – once ‘the heart of darkness’ [on the Yugoslav media scene for its relative underdevelopment] – became a safe haven for freedom of expression.16 But this brave nod towards professionalism and ethnic pluralism “couldn’t protect Bosnians from the calls to arms coming ﬁrst from Milosevic’s Serbia and then from Tudjman’s Croatia.” Despite its backwater status, Bosnia-Herzegovina is in fact one of the most heavily penetrated media landscapes on the planet, “free and open to all.”17 This remained a structural difﬁculty in the post-Dayton era, undermining international ambitions to mould the media environment in their image. Another legacy of this period was the occupation of the state broadcast infrastructure by the various ethnonational factions. Large segments of this infrastructure came under the control of the Serb leadership in Pale and the Herzegovinan Croats. As the international community would largely accept the results of ethnic cleansing as the basis for a post-war ethnoterritorial order, so it accepted ethnonational sovereignty over media infrastructure as the basis for a post-war media order. Apart from the TV and radio stations directly administered by the protogovernments, the authoritarian regimes that prevailed in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia during the ﬁrst half of the 1990s instituted a “softer” media policy than their socialist predecessor. The apparatus of censorship and bureaucratic control was looser, with a heavy reliance instead on a broadly patrimonial relation, facilitated by conditions of wartime emergency and economic crisis. The media 142

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output, however, was vastly more virulent and unprofessional than anything the dictatorially administered media had produced under Tito. A basic subjugation to authority – albeit with substantial breathing space – was replaced by craven pandering and nationalist hysteria. “Hate speech became a measure of professionalism,” according to Croatian journalist Heni Erceg.18

Media and security after Dayton Curiously, the Dayton Agreements paid almost no heed to the mass media, consigning them to a passing mention in an annexe on elections: “The Parties shall ensure . . . a politically neutral environment . . . [and] shall ensure freedom of expression and of the press . . .”19 Nonetheless, the media constituted one of the most signiﬁcant spheres of operation for the quasi-protectorate authority that the international community established under OSCE and NATO auspices. As noted, the guiding assumption throughout the early post-war years was that the media’s role had been an overwhelmingly negative one, on behalf of extremist political sponsors. “It is widely accepted that there is a close relationship between control of the media and political activities, also indeed with the will to comply with the Peace Agreement,” declared the OHR in 1997.20 The regime of international vigilance over media functioning that the OHR instituted in Bosnia has few historical parallels. Perhaps not since the U.S. occupation authority restructured Japanese media after World War II had such an intervention been mounted. This reﬂected the importance now assigned to the media in the security sphere – particularly with regard to their power to “upset the apple cart” and sabotage the foundational elections of the new order. To head off such threats, censorship and closure were adopted as punitive measures – with a readiness that attracted much comment, given that the policy was instituted by representatives of some of the world’s freest media systems. Nor was the OHR above sanctioning political parties for the actions of “their” media. Such an instance occurred in June 1997, when an OHR-appointed Media Experts Commission (MEC) “judged that . . . Croat-controlled HTV Mostar had broadcast an inﬂammatory speech by the former commander of the Herceg Bosnia police department in Mostar.” The MEC ordered the HTV chief editor to broadcast a recantation. The station ﬂouted the directive, instead rebroadcasting the original speech and following it “with an editorial response supporting the content of the speech in language which the MEC also found inﬂammatory.” Upon further investigation, it was determined that HTV was receiving illegitimate ﬁnancial support from supporters of the HDZ. The party was accordingly sanctioned by having some of its leading candidates bounced from electoral lists. Meanwhile, HTV was forced to air materials prepared by the Election Appeals Subcommission, “on the evening news . . . and on three consecutive nights,” under the threat of further sanctions – to the party.21 Perhaps the most dramatic example of the strict policy enforced in the early post-Dayton period was the October 1997 seizure by SFOR troops of transmitters 143

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used by Serb Radio and Television (SRT) in Pale. “The grounds for this action were stated to be the ‘grotesque distortion’ of the press conference by Hague war crimes prosecutor, Justice Louise Arbour,” with additional “editorial comments supportive of Karadzic and Mladic . . . as well as accusations that the Hague Tribunal was a political instrument against the Serbs.” Subsequently, the Contact Group restructured the SRT board of governors, appointing an international administrator to supervise editorial operations. The message was clear: vocal opposition to the Dayton agreement and the war-crimes tribunal would not be tolerated.22 Nor would hate speech be permitted. This was evident in February 2000, when troops occupied the transmitter of Erotel, a Croat TV station. According to Janez Kovac of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, “Erotel, which was ﬁnanced and controlled by hard-liners within the ruling Bosnian Croat HDZ, refused to comply with IMC guidelines for balanced and objective reporting. It continued to fan the ﬂames of ethnic hatred with nationalist rhetoric and thus undermine the peace process.”23 The OHR then replaced Erotel’s programming with federally produced content. There was, it appears, a carefully calculated symbolic dimension to this seizure. It took place only weeks after the defeat of HDZ in Croatia’s national elections, and suggested a cancellation of the hardnationalist option in Bosnia as well. Western policy was one of unusually juicy carrots as well as unusually heavy sticks. The carrots took the form of rich material aid, along with other proactive measures, to promote independent media in Bosnia. This reﬂects the recognition that “the situation for [such] media is tenuous. The economy in Bosnia is very poor and commercial media have an almost impossible time sustaining their operations without some type of assistance from international granting agencies.”24 Accordingly, European Community aid to the media exceeded C20 million between 1996 and 2002. The OSCE provided millions more; from across the Atlantic, USAID contributions totalled US$30 million in the ﬁrst ﬁve years after Dayton.25 The activities of private organizations, especially the Soros Foundation, were also prominent. To promote journalistic professionalism (hence bolster stability and security, as examined further below), two new journalism schools were established in Sarajevo. They were the BBC School of Journalism founded through the Soros Media Center, as well as the High College of Journalism at the Media Plan Institute (afﬁliated with a French journalism school). Unfortunately, foreign assistance post-Dayton was often poorly coordinated, and used to prop up media projects that lacked commercial viability in the longer term. (This was reﬂected in the media winnowing that took place after 1999–2000, when foreign aid began to shift away from its media focus.) As well, foreign aid could lend an unwelcome “outsider” tinge to the projects it founded and sustained. This was most evident in the case of the Open Broadcasting Network (OBN), designed to bolster a public media sector in Bosnia, but instead viewed derisively as “Bildt TV” (after then-ONCE chief Carl Bildt) and 144

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consigned to a marginal position in the media landscape. “Bildt TV” experienced several years of diminishing returns, and was ﬁnally jettisoned in 2000.26 The stated goal throughout was to encourage the growth of “independent” media; but members of the focus group brought together by Taylor and Kent for their 2000 article commonly (and “ironically”) reported that “there are no independent media in Bosnia.”27 Often, media policies in general seemed confused and counterproductive. On the one hand, repressive measures were readily adopted against ethnonationalist media. But it was the international community that had itself sanctioned the division of media infrastructure (particularly transmitters and printing facilities) among the various ethnonational factions, just as it had sanctioned the ethnoterritorial division of Bosnia. Outside actors also seemed to assume that the European-U.S. experience could simply be transplanted to Bosnia, if sufﬁcient funding support was provided. This was also symbolized by the OBN experience. Mystifyingly, the name and acronym chosen for the service were in English! Such errors delayed the reshaping of the media environment, most notably the establishment of a strong public-media sector. In August 2004, however, a replacement for OBN – Public Television BHT – ﬁnally began twenty-four-hour broadcasting, with “142 transmitters and repeaters covering 91 percent of BiH territory.” Attempts were also made to consolidate the three other state/public broadcasters under a single steering committee, and thereby mute their ethnonational identity and orientation.28 In October 2005, these efforts reached fruition with the passing of a law to establish a Public Broadcasting System (PBS; the legislation had still to be ratiﬁed at the time of writing). But how far the new system would truly serve the broad public interest, as opposed to narrower communal ones, was open to question. Borka Rudic, secretary-general of the Independent Union of Professional Journalists, accused legislators of “reduc[ing] the PBS system to three religions, cultures and languages without regard for the interests of all citizens.”29 In closing this section, we should note in passing the international efforts to bring administrative order and regulation to a chaotic Bosnian media environment. At ﬁrst through the Independent Media Commission, and since 2001 through the Communications Regulations Agency, signiﬁcant advances have been made in divvying up the airwaves, licensing commercial media, and ﬁelding complaints about media performance and threats to journalists’ security. “Rules of the game” have been established in these areas, though they are prone to be evaded.

The media and intercommunal tensions In September 2004, the Sarajevo weekly paper BH Dani, which focuses acerbically and often satirically on political themes, sparked off a storm of controversy with a cover story on Mustafa Ceric, the religious leader of Bosnian Muslims. In the context of local elections scheduled for October, “in which 145

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Muslim, Roman Catholic, and Serbian Orthodox clerics openly campaigned for their respective nationalist parties,” journalist Senad Pecanin aimed barbs at the leaders of all three religious communities in Bosnia, accusing them of displaying a “primordial social instinct” to defend their political and religious turf. But he was especially harsh toward Ceric, accusing him of using “absolutist methods for administering the Islamic Community, as well as [advancing] his own personal ambitions,” which allegedly included replacing the late Alija Izetbegovic as the political leader of Bosnia’s Muslim constituency. As Patrick Moore pointed out, however, “perhaps the most serious aspect of the attack [was] not the article itself but the magazine’s cover”: Next to the headline “I, the Great Imam,” it shows eight identical pictures of Ceric wearing only his turban and a loincloth, talking into a mobile phone with a number printed over his head. The allusion to a newspaper ad for a telephone sex line is reinforced by different captions over each of the eight photos, some of which read “only for women,” “for gay men,” “do you want to know a secret,” etc. This is apparently a reference to Ceric’s successful efforts to ban ads for telephone sex lines from the Sarajevo daily Dnevni avaz.30 In the wake of the attack, Ceric allegedly arranged for letters to be sent from the Islamist religious authority (ulema) to ten businesses that advertised with BH Dani, urging them to withdraw their ﬁnancial support. He also denounced the paper and other Bosnian media organs, including the Sarajevo weekly Slobodna Bosna, “claiming they were enemy media and agents of foreign services,”31 and describing their staff as “obsessed” and afﬂicted with “hallucinations.” The media attacks against him, according to Ceric, resulted from “a sort of devil’s circle . . . which carries revenge, hatred, [and] Islamophobia,” a trend that had increased “after 9/11, when [the media] saw that the hunt for Muslims in the whole world was allowed.” He declared: From now until the ﬁnal day, as far as we, the Bosnian Muslims, are concerned, no one, neither Serbs nor Croats, those in Sarajevo, Banja Luka or Mostar, the Americans, English, French, Germans have the right to preach morality to us Bosnian Muslims. Everyone must be clear about that. They can teach us some other things, but cannot preach morality to us, after everything that happened, especially in Srebrenica.32 In a later interview with Juska Durisic on BHTV-1 Sarajevo, Ceric argued: “I think that we have the right to defend ourselves when we are attacked. We have the right to defend our dignity and our honor . . . us[ing] all legal means, and of course all civilized means, to defend ourselves against the attack we have seen.”33 146

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The Ceric controversy points to some key features of post-Dayton media in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and their intertwining with the predictably fraught and complex landscape of intercommunal relations. Religious communities, and the political parties and movements that are often inseparable from them, retain powerful inﬂuence over media functioning, though this is today more likely to be exercised by indirect means (e.g. commercial pressures and advertising boycotts) than violence or threats of violence. As well, memories of past persecution remain inﬂuential in the intercommunal equation, as evidenced by Ceric’s reference to the Srebrenica massacre of 1995. For its part – though I have not sampled it substantially here – media coverage often abjures “objectivity” in favor of freewheeling editorializing and ad hominem attacks.34 But the Ceric case also points to the qualitative transformation of intercommunal relations, and the substantial diminution of tensions, over the past several years. Fictional detective Sherlock Holmes mentioned as the key to a case (in The Sign of the Four) a dog that did not bark in the night. In the Bosnian context, while plenty of barking is still heard, we might speak of the dog that no longer bites. As Radenko Udovicic acknowledged in a 2005 assessment, “hate speech in its original warmongering sense has practically disappeared from the media.”35 In signiﬁcant part, this is because the (foreign) custodians of Bosnia’s media order will not tolerate such outbursts. In part, though, it appears to reﬂect a stabilizing of the Bosnian security and political order since the watershed year of 2000. The events of that year, according to Kurspahic, “laid the ground for a long overdue [regionwide] change with the departure of Tudjman in Croatia, the rise of antinationalist pro-European parties in Bosniak majority areas of Bosnia, and the overthrow of Milosevic in Serbia.”36 Ethnonational mobilization has been notably more muted since. To take an instance of one dog that no longer bites, consider Risto Djogo, the former editor at Pale TV, whose genocidal rants were daily fare during the war years. “Djogo was deﬁnitely the most evil ﬁgure of that war,” remembered one journalist. “He was the only one who tried to make Serbs believe that shedding other people’s blood could be a subject of fun, something even joyous. No one else was doing that. He disregarded death, projecting it as something positive.” Recalled columnist Gojko Beric, “People were waiting for Djogo’s evening Journal, like in some masochistic ritual, expecting to see how low it could get.”37 No such rant these days could occur today – at least not more than once. And it has not occurred in the past several years. Rhetoric and bombast, in the manner of Ceric and his critics, have replaced calls for the murder or expulsion of the ethnic Other. A crucial ingredient in the blunting of ethnic tensions is the growth of an important common preoccupation among all Bosnia’s communities: the obsession with joining the European Union. Apart from the unviability of a return to ethnic war, this is probably “the only thing on which there is full political consensus among the political parties in BiH, irrespective of the ethnicity, ideology or territory they represent.”38 International representatives have readily exploited 147

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this consensus, as when Paddy Ashdown wrote (in a Bosnian newspaper) that “the European Union will want to be sure” the media have abandoned “ethnic hatred and division . . . before they let Bosnia-Herzegovina travel much further down the road to Europe.”39 The waning of ethnonational tensions is also evident in the growing prominence of ideological conﬂict, generally manifested intracommunally rather than intercommunally. To a degree, this reﬂects left-right political divisions, which can be ﬁerce. But another (and associated) divide is between religious and secular forces, as vividly manifested in the Ceric controversy.40 Notably – despite the bluster on both sides of l’affaire Ceric – neither new axis of conﬂict has produced the kind of venom or violence that ethnonational divisions did in the 1990s; nor has the highly personalized polemics of the Bosnian media scene, lamentable though they might be from the viewpoint of journalistic professionalism, and physically threatening though they can sometimes be to individual journalists. The state of professional values and practices in the Bosnian media, and their link to both national security and the personal security of media workers, is a subject to which we turn next.

Professionalism and security Media professionalism is linked to security in two main ways. First, professional media workers desire personal security, and are often denied it. Under authoritarian systems, and even in freer media environments where powerful actors nonetheless hold grudges against media workers, independent reporting can have deleterious, even injurious consequences. In Bosnia since Dayton, journalists have had to negotiate a charged environment in which perceived transgressions against a nationalist cause, or a given individual, can result in “pressures, threats and physical assaults.”41 The most notorious instance of violence was the attack on Zeljko Kopanja, chief editor of the Nezavisne Novine paper in Banja Luka. Kopanja lost both his legs when his car was blown up in October 1999 – apparently by “Serb ultra-nationalists [whose] rage was particularly provoked by a series of articles . . . on crimes committed by Serb extremists against Bosniaks, Croats and other non-Serbs” during the 1990s.42 Lower-level harassment and pressure was far more common. In 2000, fully 62 percent of Bosnian journalists reported “intimidation and interference . . . including direct or indirect pressure on the part of political parties and elected or appointed government ofﬁcials.”43 The reconﬁguring of the Balkan political landscape in 2000 relaxed this pressure somewhat. But intense political competition, particularly surrounding the 2002 federal elections, exacerbated it anew. This was most evident in print media which were, fortunately, the least “popular” among media consumers. In a scathing 2003 assessment, the International Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (IHF) described a “blatant disregard for public interest and for the basic role of the media” among print organs: 148

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Journalists were unconcerned with the professional code of conduct and with the quality of their products, and little effort was put into building any self-respect. Violation of ethical standards and rules became everyday practice amongst many of the BiH dailies and weeklies. The emergence of intolerance during the election campaigns and promotion of interests of only one political option or group in the course of 2003 escalated into a practice where the print media became private intimidators, often taking on the role of prosecutor, judge and executioner, thereby undermining any form of democratic dialogue. Print media published open threats to individuals or groups, who were placed on a hit list[,] and newspapers contained one-sided texts, ﬂavored with animosity, insults and open hatred. The IHF analysis also notes aptly that “such an approach to journalism made print media unable to resist the new post-electoral offensive of the governmental bodies, political or ﬁnancial power centers and individuals [that] aimed at tampering with editorial policies.”44 Indeed, as recently as mid-2004, Slobodan Vaskovic, editor of the Patriot weekly in Banja Luka, was placed under protection along with his family, after publishing articles about local corruption.45 Today, though, attempts to control and manipulate the media are likely to be more subtle, in the soft-authoritarian tradition. They tend to take the form of advertising boycotts or, more frequently, civil suits alleging defamation and slander. The popularity of this latter measure, in fact, led to a Law on Libel and Defamation being passed in 2001. In it, the OHR sought to reduce pressure on media from frivolous and malicious suits. The law redeﬁned libel as a civil offense. But the possible ﬁnancial damage to media from civil actions remained “a real noose around journalists’ neck,” in Udovicic’s opinion. Aggrieved and aggressive elements were “ﬁling a huge number of civil suits . . . asking for enormous amounts of money for ‘inﬂicted mental anguish’.” One hundred cases were pending just in Sarajevo.46 A second link between professionalism and security was touched on at the outset of this chapter. This is the contribution that media professionalism allegedly makes to the stability of the national (and hence international) order. From the start, this conviction has been prominent in the international media strategy for Bosnia. For instance, the “Standards of Professional Conduct for the Media and Journalists,” introduced by the Provisional Election Commission in 1997, warned journalists and media institutions against “inﬂammatory language which encourages discrimination, prejudice, or hatred, or which encourages violence, or contributes to the creation of a climate in which violence could occur.”47 Avoiding such language, and related reportorial practices, was seen to bolster media professionalism – and vice-versa. International policy thus reﬂects the abiding liberal belief that “the real professional will not spread ethnic hatred, racism, xenophobia, and war propaganda.”48 This concept of professionalism-as-security has achieved some notable 149

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advances since the 2000 watershed. Consider the reporting of “ceremonies marking the reopening of a number of war-destroyed mosques . . . in western Bosnia” in August 2004. In Udovicic’s assessment, these events, with their complex associations from a recent and traumatic past, “were covered professionally,” both by all-federation media and by those in Republika Srpska. “Something that used to be ridiculed, politicized or at least neglected in the RS media was now the subject of more or less fair information, while the media in the Federation carefully portrayed the atmosphere of tolerance.”49 The 2004 reopening of the famous bridge at Mostar evoked similarly respectful, nonprovocative coverage. It was also widely publicized by the international media as an important symbol of reconciliation – attention that might have inﬂuenced domestic media coverage. Another signiﬁcant development is the fortifying of professional and intercommunal bonds among Bosnian journalists. Professional associations, like the media as a whole, remain basically divided along ethnic lines; Babic counts no fewer than six separate associations on Bosnian territory.50 But “all the journalist associations have adopted the Press Code, drawn from existing European standards of journalistic practice, as the basis of a self-regulation system.”51 Moreover, at the end of 2004, three associations formed an umbrella Association of Bosnian-Herzegovinan Journalists. This was the ﬁrst national-level association since the war ended, and marked “an important professional and political success.”52 Huge challenges remain, with plenty to fuel pessimism. “Most media analysts warn of a poor media environment in Bosnia-Herzegovina, characterized by lack of media professionalism, poverty of [self-]produced media contents, huge politicization of certain (mostly stronger) media outlets, as well as tremendous journalistic animosities.”53 Decades of an authoritarian legacy, and years of war and genocide, have produced a media landscape fraught with tensions and communal cleavages. Nonetheless, as Bosnia itself seems further from war than at any point in the post-Dayton period, so do the media seem unlikely to replicate – or be allowed to replicate – their destabilizing and hate-fomenting activities of the early 1990s.

Conclusion In liberal theory, media have long been depicted as bolstering democracy, stability, and security. Though most analysis has concentrated on the national level, the “spillover” capacity of crises lends the media an international-security dimension as well. The policies developed to govern the Bosnian media environment after Dayton reﬂect this perceived linkage. An unusually interventionist foreign community imposed a quasi-protectorate on Bosnia. In the media sphere, while the ethnonational status quo was initially respected, harsh disciplinary measures were adopted towards media that insisted on promoting hatred or violence, along with the parties that sustained them. These suppressive policies were 150

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combined with a range of proactive measures of varying success. The result was a sharp decline in extremist rhetoric in the media, including the virtual disappearance of hate speech and overt calls for violence. The Bosnian media remain heavily politicized, and continue to experience serious resource constraints and abiding problems of professional functioning. Journalists, too, remain vulnerable to punitive actions, including threats and violence. Nonetheless, especially after 2000, some structural improvements have been evident: in the coherence of the media environment; the advance of a more pluralist discourse; and the professional capacities of media institutions and their workers. To what extent the security order in Bosnia, and internationally, has been bolstered by these transformations is uncertain. It is reasonably clear, however, that this order has not been severely undermined by media institutions and messages. Given the radically destabilizing role of the media in the ﬁrst half of the 1990s, this is no small accomplishment.

Notes 1 I wish to acknowledge the help and insights of my research assistant, Pamela Huerta, in the preparation of this chapter. Throughout, I draw on a decade of research into transitional mass media, centered on a doctoral project that included extensive ﬁeldwork in four case-study countries, and some 150 interviews with media professionals and policymakers of many stripes. See A. Jones, The Press in Transition: A Comparative Study of Nicaragua, South Africa, Jordan, and Russia, Hamburg: Deutsche Übersee-Institut, 2002, and the materials compiled on the author’s website at http://adamjones.freeservers.com/media.htm. For a more detailed treatment of the Nicaraguan case, see A. Jones, Beyond the Barricades: Nicaragua and the Struggle for the Sandinista Press, 1979–1998, Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002. This has some interesting parallels with the Bosnian experience, notably the common backdrop of an authoritarian and underdeveloped media system, the trauma of civil war, political efforts at reconciliation, and diverse professional challenges for media workers. 2 Representative texts of the human security school include B. Buzan, People, States and Fear, 2nd edition, London: Longman, 1991, and the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), The Responsibility to Protect, Ottawa, International Development Research Centre, 2001. 3 On post-Tito Yugoslavia, see M. Thompson, Forging War: The Media in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Hercegovina, Luton: University of Luton Press, 2003. See also E. Gordy, The Culture of Power in Serbia: Nationalism and the Destruction of Alternatives, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999, esp. ch. 3, “The destruction of information alternatives;” and D. MacDonald, Balkan Holocausts? Serbian and Croatian Victim-Centred Propaganda and the War in Yugoslavia, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002. For a discussion of other cases of destructive communications use in genocide and crimes against humanity, including the Nazi and Rwandan cases, see A. Jones, “Communicating genocide: Destructive and constructive uses of communication in modern mass killing,” paper presented to the biennial conference of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), Boca Raton, FL, 4–6 June 2005 (available from the author: please write to [email protected]). 4 The instances most often cited are U.S. policymaking at the end of the 1991 Gulf War, with hundreds of thousands of desperate Kurds ﬂeeing Saddam Hussein to 151

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5 6

7

8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15 16

17 18

sanctuary in Turkey, and the Somalia intervention of 1992–1993. East Timor during the Indonesian crackdown of 1999 appears to be another case of media-inﬂuenced security policy. So too, on a slightly smaller scale, does Bosnia-Herzegovina. News footage of Muslim prisoners behind Serb barbed wire in the summer of 1992, with emaciated prisoners recalling Nazi concentration camp survivors, that ﬁrst established Bosnia as an iconic genocide, encouraged numerous survivors of the Jewish holocaust to speak out against Serb atrocities, and placed increased pressure on western governments to intervene. The protracted artillery assault on Sarajevo, producing many heartstopping television images, can also be mentioned. For a skeptical view of the phenomenon, see P. Robinson, The CNN Effect: The Myth of News Media, Foreign Policy and Intervention, London: Routledge, 2002. See R. Cornwell, “US accused of plan to muzzle Al-Jazeera through privatisation,” Independent, 15 February 2005; “Al Jazeera troubled by privatization order,” UPI dispatch in the Middle East Times, 17 February 2005. Bosnia is, after all, a country that imported large numbers of Muslim mujahideen during the war, including some who went on to ﬁgure in Al-Qaeda and similar movements. As well, Bosnia’s prominence in western security policy is heightened by its status as a major source and crossroads of illicit migration to the West, including – or potentially including – the terrorists who currently dominate the security agenda of the global superpower. Examples of hard authoritarian systems include Stalinist USSR, Nazi Germany, El Salvador/Guatemala in the 1970s–1980s, the People’s Republic of China, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Soft-authoritarian systems include Mexico under the PRI, Jordan, Sandinista Nicaragua, post-Soviet Russia, Singapore, and South Africa under apartheid. The liberal-democratic, market-oriented model is typiﬁed by Canada, the UK, the U.S., Australia, and post-apartheid South Africa. G. Robinson, Tito’s Maverick Media: The Politics of Mass Communications in Yugoslavia, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977. Robinson quoted in M. Taylor and M. Kent, “Media transitions in Bosnia: From propagandistic past to uncertain future,” Gazette, 62, 2000, p. 357. On the links between authoritarianism and underdevelopment in media functioning, see Jones, The Press in Transition, pp. 26–30. As Richard Byrne noted in 1999, “Considering that a daily newspaper costs [the equivalent of] 1 mark [in Bosnia], and a magazine costs 2 marks, buying a daily newspaper could cost a worker at the lower end of the salary scale 10 percent of his or her monthly salary.” Byrne, “Casualties of war: Will Bosnia’s scars of conﬂict and slow transition to market economies kill off its independent media?” International Reporting Project, Spring 1999. D. Babic, “Journalism in post-Dayton Bosnia: How to make the media more responsible,” in D. Sokolovic and F. Bieber (eds), Reconstructing Multiethnic Societies: The Case of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001, p. 157. D. Chandler, Bosnia: Faking Democracy after Dayton, London: Pluto Press, 2000, p. 112. K. Panic and E. Plehi, “Comparative analysis of the print media in BiH: Information wars in the Balkans since 1991,” http://Mediaonline.ba, 7 July 2004. Taylor and Kent, “Media transitions in Bosnia,” p. 357. K. Kurspahic, Prime Time Crime: Balkan Media in War and Peace, Washington: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2003, p. 93. See also a useful review of Kurspahic’s book, P. Lyon, “Words of war: Journalism in the former Yugoslavia,” SAIS Review, 23, 2003, pp. 221–226. Kurspahic, Prime Time Crime, p. 95. Quoted in Kurspahic, Prime Time Crime, p. 72.

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19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33

34

35 36 37 38

Quoted in Chandler, Bosnia, p. 114. Ibid., p. 112. Chandler, Bosnia, p. 124. Ibid., pp. 126–127. J. Kovac, “NATO intervenes in Bosnia media war,” Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Balkan Crisis Report No. 118, 22 February 2000. Available at http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/balkan/IWPR022200.html. Taylor and Kent, “Media transitions in Bosnia,” p. 366. See USAID/Bureau for Policy and Program Coordination, “Assessment of USAID media assistance in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1996–2002,” PPC Evaluation Working Paper No. 6, September 2003, pp. 3, 10–11. For a summary of one USAID-funded media project (the Center for Investigative Reporting, CIN), see R. Byrne, “The sick men of Europe,” Foreign Policy, May/June 2005, pp. 88–89. “OBN simply neglected the fundamental principles of successful media operation: non-existent target public, neglect of the media environment, failure to identify with the potential public, unresolved ownership status, lack of commercial strategy.” Z. Udovicic et al., “Media at a turning point: A media landscape of BiH,” http://Mediaonline.ba, 12 January 2001. Taylor and Kent, “Media transitions in Bosnia,” p. 371. R. Udovicic, “Battling political frustration,” http://Mediaonline.ba, 18 January 2005. See also J. Harbin, “Public broadcasting struggle,” Institute for War and Peace Reporting, 15 February 2002. Rudic paraphrased in “Analysis: Bosnian public broadcasting reform faces more hurdles,” BBC Worldwide Monitoring, 18 October 2005. This and preceding quotes from, and cited in, P. Moore, “The Imam’s New Clothes,” RFE/RL, 8 October 2004, http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2004/10/627fdc01c08f-40a9-b3de-3232dd18ed2e.html. BBC Worldwide Monitoring, 22 October 2004. Ibid. Ceric interviewed on “Frankly speaking,” BHTV-1 Sarajevo, 21 October 2004, cited in BBC Worldwide Monitoring, 25 October 2004. Asked by Jurisic whether “it was not the Islamic Community but you [personally] that was attacked,” Ceric responded: “You should read the constitution of the Islamic Community, which says that the Reis-ul-Ulema is the symbol of the Islamic Community. . . . Whether someone likes it or not, I currently represent and symbolize the Islamic Community and Muslims in Bosnia-Hercegovina, not only in the homeland but also abroad. Therefore, this is an attack on the Islamic Community.” For example, discussing the Ceric case, the host of the 60 Minutes program on BHTV, Bakir Hadziomerovic, stated on 18 October that “Ceric has turned again to his favorite topic: mud-slinging at unsuitable journalists and media. . . . A Ministry of Truth, of which Effendi Ceric is an increasingly loud advocate of late, should impose sanctions on all journalists who are not to his taste or that of the party whose interests he has been protecting all these years [the Party of Democratic Action (SDA)]. . . . The recent ﬁerce attacks of Ceric’s wing within the Islamic community . . . are yet another proof of Effendi Ceric’s increasingly apparent nervousness over the upcoming elections for the Reis-ul-ulema of the Islamic Community.” Hadziomerovic on BHTV, 18 October 2004, cited in BBC Worldwide Monitoring, 19 October 2004. Udovicic, “Battling political frustration.” Kurspahic, Prime Time Crime, p. 183. Quoted in Kurspahic, Prime Time Crime, p. 101. R. Udovicic, “The press in Bosnia-Herzegovina on the European idea,” http://Mediaonline.ba, 18 February 2003.

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39 “Analysis: Bosnia-Hercegovina gets EC grant to reform public broadcasting,” BBC Monitoring World Media, 19 November 2003. 40 Note, for instance, that the ad hominem attack on Ceric cited in note 33 was launched by a journalist belonging to “his” (Bosnian-Muslim) community. 41 Helsinki Committee BiH, “Situation in media in Bosnia and Herzegovina for the aspect of human rights,” 5 February 2002. A taxonomy of coercive strategies is provided courtesy of a survey on “Pressures against electronic media for the JanuaryNovember 2001 Period,” conducted by Internews BiH and the School of Political Sciences in Sarajevo. They included “threat[ening] phone calls . . . letters or messages,” “extraordinary ﬁnancial controls” (e.g. harassment by state ﬁnancial authorities), “court cases related to the nature of the job,” damage to equipment, “conﬁscation of video/audio/printed materials by the authorities,” restrictions on freedom of movement and banning of access to reporters, withdrawals of advertising, and physical assaults. Some of the regularity of reported harassment may relate to the upcoming 2002 elections at the time the survey was conducted, but many are such entrenched features of the Bosnian media system that they are likely to continue for some time to come. 42 Udovicic et al., “Media at a turning point.” 43 Ibid. 44 International Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, “IHF focus: Freedom of expression and the media . . .,” http://www.ihf-hr.org/viewbinary/viewdocument. php?doc_id=5511. 45 “Bosnian Serb editor under police protection following threats,” Agence FrancePresse dispatch, 2 June 2004. 46 Udovicic, “Media in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2003.” See also Helsinki Committee, “Situation of media in Bosnia.” 47 Quoted in Chandler, Bosnia, p. 117; emphasis added. 48 Babic, “Journalism in post-Dayton Bosnia,” p. 165; emphasis added. 49 Udovicic, “Battling political frustration.” 50 They are “the Association of Journalists of BiH, the Independent Union of Professional Journalists of BiH (both in the Bosniak part of the FbiH territory), the Association of Croat Journalists, the Association of Croat Publishers (both in the Croat part of the FbiH), the Association of Journalists of RS and the Independent Union of Journalists of RS. Additionally, there is another association called the Syndicate of Professional Journalists of FbiH, but in fact this organization only serves the Bosniak part of FbiH, and it is expected that two extra unions will be established for the Croat and Serb sides.” Babic, “Journalism in post-Dayton Bosnia,” p. 166, n. 5. 51 Ibid., p. 164. 52 Udovicic, “Battling political frustration.” 53 Ibid.

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8 OVERCOMING THE FAILINGS OF DAYTON Defense reform in Bosnia-Herzegovina Tobias Pietz

On 30 August 2005, the National Assembly of the Republika Srpska (RS) endorsed with more than a two-thirds majority the changes recommended by the Defense Reform Commission (DRC), an institution mandated by Paddy Ashdown, the High Representative for Bosnia- Herzegovina. This decision might be the single most important move of the Serbs in BiH since the signing of the General Framework Agreement in Dayton, Ohio, ten years ago.1 Sixtyone deputies of the RS National Assembly endorsed the reforms, resulting in the complete abolishment of the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS) and Ministry of Defense, and the eventual transfer of all defense competencies to State-level.2 One of the biggest ﬂaws of the Dayton Peace Accords (DPA) – allowing Bosnia-Herzegovina to have three separate ethnic armies – has thus been redressed. In 1995, both Richard Holbrooke and General Wesley Clarke thought that “dismantling of the three armies and creating a single, integrated force [. . .] was eminently doable”3 but the NATO high command refused the inclusion of such potentially dangerous measures in the DPA. This, and the acceptance of the name Republika Srpska, became the main obstacles for reforms in the security sector and in Bosnia-Herzegovina more generally. The issue of a single Statelevel army and Ministry of Defense was thus dismissed in any talks on defense reform between the Entities and the international community. For years, a clear and well-structured defense reform was not feasible as both sides (in some cases even all three ethnic groups) stubbornly held to their respective armed forces. Moreover, old threat perceptions persisted while equipment aged and professional training dwindled. In the beginning, defense reform driven by the international community mostly constituted small steps to build the peace by slowly downsizing the armies and preventing a resumption of violence through conﬁdence building measures. Moreover, the different international players were not able to establish a joint and coherent effort on defense 155

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and security reform, their often contradictory agendas and interests conﬂicting with Bosnian security needs. Additionally, the international community neglected the most important part of the defense reform equation: to control, disarm, demobilize and reintegrate the various military groups, factions and individual combatants. The degree of wartime mobilization into armed groups had been signiﬁcant, and posed a corresponding threat to security in the aftermath of the peace treaty. Reduction and reform – though not really tackled by the international community until 1998 – constituted the main defense and security challenges for the country from 1995 onwards. This chapter charts the evolution of the defense reform process after Dayton: from ﬁrst steps of conﬁdence building and agreements for reduction of military personnel under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Peace Implementation Council (PIC),4 to the ﬁnal establishment of the Defense Reform Commission (DRC) through the High Representative – which has been decisive for the reform process. But it also wants to shed light on the role of the individual in the defense sector: who where the groups and ﬁghters involved in the war? What was their impact on the current armies? And where are they now? I will look at some of the reduction and reintegration measures taken, as well as to the more recent trend in privatization of security and defense. This has been present in Bosnia’s defense reform process as an outgrowth of a foreign-sponsored Train and Equip program, and in current opportunities arising out of the war in Iraq and other conﬂicts.

Armies, paramilitaries and “weekend ﬁghters” During the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–1995), most of the male population and several thousand women were mobilized into Serb, Bosniak, and Croat forces. In the course of the interethnic ﬁghting, there were three armed forces in existence: the Army of the Republic of BiH (ARBiH, mostly Bosniaks), the Croatian Defense Council (HVO, mostly Croats), and the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS, mostly Serbs). Each of the armies was composed of a mixture of regular soldiers, paramilitaries and young men and women drafted on an ad hoc basis. Although these ethnically divided military groups were nominally a part of the Army of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (JNA) and the Territorial Defense Force (TDF) of Bosnia-Herzegovina,5 a substantial portion of them were regular civilians who had taken up arms. While the core of the armed forces consisted of soldiers originally trained by the JNA, these professionals and recruits were supported by external soldiers, paramilitaries and mercenaries, as well as warlords and criminals. In addition, not all of the enlisted soldiers were on active duty for various reasons; for example, at the beginning of the war only slightly more than half of the ARBiH forces had access to military equipment. While some estimates suggest that a total of 400,000 to 430,000 people were recruited for the war effort, others made by the International Institute for Stra156

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tegic Studies (IISS) and the World Defence Almanac (WDA) are considerably lower, at 175,000 to 227,000. The latter estimates, however, were based on numbers relating to “real” armies that could be clearly identiﬁed. Additional groups of paramilitaries or “weekend-ﬁghters” were not included.6 The lack of reliable data constitutes a major problem for various post-conﬂict measures and clear provisions for defense reform. In April 1994, the VRS consisted of roughly 100,000 men: 33,000 professionals, 63,000 recruits, 4,000 volunteers, Special Forces from Serbia, and 1,000–1,500 mercenaries from Russia, Ukraine, and Bulgaria.7 From 1994/1995 onwards, the HVO commanded some 45,000 regular soldiers, supplemented by roughly 4,000–5,000 volunteers and 15,000–20,000 further men seconded by the Croatian Army. When ﬁghting ceased, ARBiH consisted of some 90,000–92,000 troops, in addition to volunteers from Islamic countries. The number of paramilitary forces is especially hard to estimate.8 Even as early as 1991, nationalist parties had begun to form paramilitary forces of their own. On the Croatian side, these forces included the “Zebras”, the “Black Legion” and the “Croatian Defense Union” (HOS). The Serb side was represented by the infamous “Knindzi” paramilitaries, the “White Eagles” (established by Vuk Draskovic), the “Serb Cetnik-Movement” (Vojislav Seselj), supporters of “Captain Dragan” (Dragan Vasiljkovic), and the “Serb Voluntary Guard” under its leader “Arkan” (Zeljko Raznjatovic). During the war, approximately 3,000 Islamic ﬁghters came to Bosnia, most of them forming the El Mujahid battalion which was part of the 7th Muslim Brigade of the ARBiH. Of the approximately 12,000 Bosnian passports distributed to foreigners during and immediately after the war, 70 percent reportedly went to foreign mujahedin ﬁghters.9 It was not until 1996 that the El Mujahid battalion – formed by ﬁghters from Iran, Afghanistan, and Arab countries – was disbanded under U.S. pressure. In the aftermath of 11 September 2001, allegations were raised that members of Al Qaeda had found refuge in Bosnia, but it was not possible to establish exactly how many former mujahedin remained in the country. Allegations of war crimes committed by these groups have shaped, and will continue to shape perceptions within the three armed forces. These perceptions will continue to hinder both defense restructuring and attitudes regarding the creation of a single military force. To what extent former members of these groups had found their way into the regular armed forces remains unclear, though it appears likely that they were the ﬁrst to leave during the crucial reductions over the last ﬁve years. The side effects of the force reductions in Bosnia, as well as in the rest of the Western Balkan states, have been substantial, particularly with regards to mercenaries and the privatization of defense and security markets world wide. In the period immediately following the war, it is not accurate to talk of demobilization or controlled reduction but rather of the disintegration of the armed forces of all groups. Of the estimated 400,000 to 430,000 combatants in 1995, 370,000 left their units over a period of ﬁve years. With the exception of 157

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small cadres loyal to political parties, to paramilitary formations or to the civilian police, most of the combatants left in the immediate aftermath of the Dayton Peace Accords (DPA). In particular, several issues concerning disarmament and demobilization were handled badly after the signing of the DPA, especially regarding small arms and light weapons, which continue to pose a threat to Bosnian society today. Though the DPA contained powerful provisions for dealing with the military aspects of the peace settlement (DPA, Annex 1a) – with which all forces complied under the auspices of the OSCE until September 1997 – none of the tasks speciﬁed within the document were related to demobilization or controlled downsizing of the parties to the conﬂict. The only forces that the conﬂict parties were obligated to discharge were those “which cannot be accommodated in cantonment/barracks areas. . . . Demobilization shall consist of removing from the possession of these personnel all weapons, including individual weapons. . . . All personnel belonging to these forces shall be released from service and shall not engage in any further training or other military activities” (DPA, 1a, Article IV (3)). Though it was intended that IFOR oversee and control the military agreements, such oversight did not materialize regarding the demilitarization and demobilization of soldiers or combatants. Instead, demobilization subsequent to the signing of the DPA was bogus; soldiers and combatants had simply to turn in their uniforms before being sent home.10 According to estimates by the World Bank, after six months (i.e. by June 1996) almost 300,000 combatants had left the armed forces: 100,000 from ARBiH units, 45,000 from HVO and 150,000 from the VRS.11 Discharged soldiers were mainly absorbed by local towns and communities. Many soldiers, especially from the VRS, used their pre-war JNA “military books” which entitled them in most cases to a tax waiver on one personal vehicle, tariff-free importation of business equipment and other goods, education credits and the use of government utilities. The remaining armed forces of all three groups often lost their most capable and trained members, adding to the already existing lack of competence and skills in these armies. By mid-1996, approximately 150,000 soldiers were still on active duty. Three years after the signing of the DPA, the Croat HVO even continued to receive supplies, personnel and orders from the Ministry of Defense in Croatia.12 Of the US$152 million spent on the Army of the Federation of BiH (VF, consisting of the components ARBiH and HVO) until 1999, one-third went to the HVO and the other two-thirds to the ARBiH. In 1998, the HVO received KM117 million ﬁnancial assistance from the Republic of Croatia, while the Army of the RS received KM9.4 million from the FR Yugoslavia to pay the salaries of former JNA ofﬁcers, and an additional KM18.5 million to educate cadets and students at military schools.13 With such a clear separation of all three armies and continuing external intervention, no coherent defense reform was feasible.

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Dayton and beyond The attempts by the international community to control the armed forces of the warring factions can be differentiated into three main phases:14 the stabilization of the truce through the Dayton Peace Accords (DPA) and the deployment of IFOR (DPA Annex 1-A); conﬁdence and security-building measures (DPA Annex 1-B); and efforts to design a common security and defense policy on the State-level. The new constitution of Bosnia-Herzegovina, contained in Annex 4 of the DPA, did not include any substantial defense competencies on the State-level but left all defense matters to the two entities. An exception was the Standing Committee on Military Matters (SCMM), an advisory body to the BiH Presidency and platform for exchanging communication and building up conﬁdence between entity armed forces on the ground. Nevertheless, the constitution included some provisions which described defense and security in a broader sense and later “became the linchpin of reforms and the strengthening of Statelevel defense capacities.”15 In contrast to the post-war agreements on Kosovo, the Dayton Peace Accords of 1995 also did not make any arrangements for the concrete reduction of armed forces and demobilization of ex-combatants. Ending the war, separating the armies, and preserving Bosnia-Herzegovina (albeit as a weak State with two strong Entities) were the driving motives of the Dayton negotiators, not necessarily building a sustainable peace. Although the ratio of armed forces had been ﬁxed at 5:2:2 between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Croatia, and Bosnia, with a ratio of 2:1 between the Federation of BiH and the Republika Srpska, the Pentagon at that time rejected a provision in the DPA for the implementation of such a ratio: disarming combatants and downsizing armed forces were considered to be ‘softer’ measures for conﬁdence-building and therefore not included within the DPA’s ‘harder’ arms control provisions. What is more, any issue not negotiated and agreed upon at Dayton was frozen for years. In his memoirs, Richard Holbrooke, then U.S. special envoy for the Balkans and chief architect of Dayton, characterizes the retention of two (or even three) hostile armies, the lack of binding agreements to disarm, and the ensuing prevention of the emergence of a single army as the most fateful ﬂaw of the DPA.16 Whereas Holbrooke blames the Pentagon and NATO, Carl Bildt, former EU negotiator on former Yugoslavia and ﬁrst High Representative for Bosnia, holds the U.S. determination to create room for the build-up of the Federation army (VF) responsible for the ﬂaws within the Accords.17 Under the DPA, a large number of different organizations were involved in post-conﬂict reconstruction efforts: IFOR was tasked with military peacekeeping and, if necessary, peace-enforcement (DPA Annex 1-A). The United Nations (UN), on the other hand, was assigned the job of building an International Police Task Force (DPA Annex 11), while the OSCE was mandated with negotiations on military conﬁdence- and security-building, arms control 159

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and assistance in the implementation and veriﬁcation of achieved agreements (DPA Annex 1-B).18 In contrast to most other peace agreements, the DPA not only encompasses State-level Parties but also the two political Entities (Federation and Republika Srpska) that form the Bosnian state. With the DPA, the Parties committed themselves to “withdraw all heavy weapons and forces to cantonment/barracks areas or other locations as designated by the IFOR Commander” as well as to “demobilize forces which cannot be accommodated in cantonment/barrack areas” (DPA Annex 1-A). Reﬂecting the mixed nature of military formations, the term “forces” did not just pertain to regular armed forces, but to the military police and special police units as well. Annex 1-B, entitled “Agreement on Regional Stabilization,” and particularly Article IV on sub-regional arms control, pertains to the control of heavy weapons, namely tanks, armored combat vehicles, artillery, combat aircraft, and attack helicopters. However, it does not specify the number of military personnel to be retained except for a statement on voluntary establishment of an upper limit.

Conﬁdence and security building measures Agreement on Article IV concerning sub-regional arms control measures was actually negotiated after the signing of the DPA and under the auspices of the OSCE. It was signed on 14 June 1996 in Florence (“Florence Agreement”) and involves the State of BiH, the Republika Srpska, the Federation of BiH, the Republic of Croatia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The agreement does not include measures for defense reform, nor oblige the parties to any limitations on the number of personnel in their armed forces; the Parties only agreed to voluntary reductions of personnel while reductions of heavy weaponry were strictly implemented under the control of OSCE until October 1997. Following this, the Article V agreement – negotiated on the basis of Article V of DPA Annex 1-B – foresaw a Regional Arms Control Agreement with the goal of “establishing a regional balance in and around the former Yugoslavia.” In addition, the Florence Agreement set ceilings for the non-Serbian parties in Bosnia-Herzegovina beyond their actual holdings in most categories, thus allowing for a controlled arms acquisition by the Federation of BiH Armed Forces.19 The negotiations on Conﬁdence and Security-Building Measures (CSBM) under DPA Articles II and IV, as well as the Vienna Document on CSBMs (of 1994), commenced in December 1995 under the chairmanship of the OSCE. They foresaw, among other matters, restrictions on military deployments, restraints on the reintroduction of foreign forces, the withdrawal of forces and heavy weapons to cantonments or barrack areas, and the notiﬁcation of dismantling of special operations and armed civilian groups. The resulting Article II/Vienna Agreement of 26 January 1996 aimed at achieving openness and transparency in the armed forces, prevention of unintended escalation, and promotion of military cooperation between the two entities and the State of BiH. It did not prescribe any limitations on the amount of military personnel deemed 160

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acceptable, nor did it try to broker further discussions as to what kind of armed forces, and for what purposes, Bosnia should have in the future.20 In 1996, all efforts were primarily focused on keeping the peace. From 1996 onwards, the OSCE Mission in Sarajevo began to organize a series of seminars with the Parties to the Article II/Vienna Agreement, namely the military representatives within Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Speciﬁcally, the OSCE Personal Representative to the Chairman in Ofﬁce for Article II initiated a widening of the agenda beyond the original scope of the agreement. This was aimed at the development of a joint security and defense identity for BiH as a whole, including, most notably, a joint military doctrine. Following a resolution of the Peace Implementation Council (PIC) and OHR engagement, the Standing Committee on Military Matters (SCMM) was changed in June 1999 from an advisory body (as foreseen in DPA Article V) to a working body. In its interaction with the ministries of defense of the two Entities, the OSCE stressed that, for an army to be operational, military expenditures must strike a balance between (1) personnel, (2) operations, and (3) procurement, maintenance, and other outlays, with each area receiving roughly one-third of expenditures. Additionally, the entity ministries of defense were asked to reduce their expenditures to stay within the budgets approved by the respective parliaments and avoid overspending. These were recommendations that, at the time, both Entity ministries of defense were clearly failing to achieve.

The Train and Equip Program: one-sided modernization In the face of deep mistrust towards the Serbs, the option of supporting the military build-up of the Federation of BiH was kept open throughout the negotiations prior to, during, and after Dayton (see “Florence Agreement” above). Strategic considerations of the United States and the European Union had been crucial to diplomatic efforts during the last stage of, and in the period directly after the war. As of August 1995, the Clinton administration pursued a policy of backing Croatian military efforts in order to unblock the diplomatic stalemate with Milosevic.21 Part of this general approach was an offer by the U.S. government to arm and train the Armed Forces of the Federation of BiH if a peace accord materialized.22 This asymmetry in the approach of the United States, accepted for the most part by the Contact Group,23 favored the military of the Bosniak-Croat Federation of BiH: the Croat military in Bosnia could expect to be rewarded for its war efforts. Thus, in order to make the DPA agreeable to the Bosniaks as well, the U.S. delegation offered, among other things, to train and equip their army. The question of whether the level of armaments should be reduced or upgraded represented one of the most highly disputed issues within the U.S. administration and during subsequent Dayton negotiations. After the signing of the DPA, the US$500 million Train and Equip Program (T&EP) started in early 161

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1996 and included contributions from Egypt, Turkey, Malaysia, and the United Arab Emirates. The T&EP lasted for six years and involved telecommunications, artillery, small arms, and ﬂight training, along with the U.S. donation of forty-ﬁve tanks, eighty-ﬁve armored personnel carriers (APCs), ﬁfteen helicopters and 116 howitzers. The main idea was to offset Serb military advantages, to sever Bosniak cooperation with Iran, and to foster Bosniak-Croat military integration in the Federation of BiH Army, which still consisted of two components (ARBiH and HVO). Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI), a private U.S. military company that had trained the Croatian military before and during its offensive against Serb-held territories in Bosnia in 1995, was the main agency for implementing the training component.24 The T&EP closed the gap between actual holdings and permitted ceilings of the Armed Forces of the Federation. It also decreased the still existing tensions between the components HVO and ARBiH and gave shape to a common Ministry of Defense in the Federation. Moreover, the T&EP alleviated military imbalances between the Entities and ostensibly contributed to the spread of democratic ideas within the military community, at least within the Federation.25 Within the conﬁnes of the Dayton Agreement, however, the T&EP came under criticism for being too expensive, inefﬁcient, and particularly, for remilitarizing the Federation of BiH. The question is whether or not the option of a totally demilitarized BiH – an option that would have saved resources and international community efforts – would have been feasible without the T&EP.26 Instead, defense issues kept international organizations occupied over the long term. Moreover, the signiﬁcant burden that the defense budget put on both Entities’ ﬁnancial resources could have been eased, and additional money made available for other projects.

Downsizing instead of reforming It was not until 1998 that the international community and BiH ofﬁcials started to focus on downsizing of the armed forces, reduction of military sites, and the sale or destruction of outdated or surplus military equipment. The ﬁrst planned reduction of both Entities’ armed forces followed a meeting of the Peace Implementation Council (PIC) in Madrid in 1998, and the PIC’s Madrid Declaration (Article 13). The reduction was intended to be implemented in two phases – 15 percent in 1999 and another 15 percent the following year. The overall objective of these reductions was threefold: to improve the budgetary situation of both Entities, to increase security within the region, and to strengthen mutual trust between the two former enemies. The next period of downsizing of the armed forces began from spring 2002 onwards and was mainly a consequence of the excessive military spending on the part of the two political Entities since, at that time, defense spending in Bosnia and Herzegovina amounted to 10 percent of GDP. Facilitated by the OSCE and SFOR, the Joint Military Commission (JMC) agreed to reduce forces in the spring of 2002. While the Federation agreed to 162

DEFENSE REFORM AND THE FAILINGS OF DAYTON

discharge 8,936 soldiers – that is, 6,436 Bosniaks and 2,500 Croats out of a total of 22,496 – the RS accepted a reduction of 1,692 out of a total of 8,292.27 All these measures were accompanied by support programs of the international community to help re-integrate redundant military personnel into BiH society.28 Discharged soldiers were widely seen as a potential threat to society if they turned to organized crime – potentially causing new violent ethnic clashes – or became mercenaries in other conﬂicts.29 The international community strategy in the late 1990s was to reduce both Entity armies to the point where they would have lost the potential to perform their outdated doctrines of territorial defense. In a country where over 400,000 individuals were armed at the height of the conﬂict, armies of about 4,000–6,000 professional soldiers are comparatively small and would be less likely and able to go on the offensive and stage attacks.30 Remaining soldiers often lacked the basic skills needed for international peace support operations with the UN or other set-ups, a capability shortfall that both Entity MoDs slowly started to redress under international pressure. Though the public standing and importance of the armed forces in both Entities decreased, their symbolic value remained strong – especially in the Bosnian Serb VRS. No Serb politician in BiH therefore dared to initiate any transfer to or build up of State-level defense capacities.

Accelerating the process: the OHR, Orao and the DRC At its meeting in May 2000, the PIC extended the Stabilization Force (SFOR) mandate to include the development of military doctrines, the restructuring of Entity armed forces, and the creation of joint institutions at State level. Also mandated by the PIC decisions of May 2000, the OHR took the lead in promoting State-level security and defense policy in BiH. Through the adoption of the Statelevel Defense Policy in May 2001 by the collective Presidency, the fundamentals were laid out for the later establishment of State-level defense institutions.31 In spring 2002, a working group of the BiH Council of Ministers, supported by the OHR Political Department, drafted a Security Policy for BiH’s Council of Ministers, requesting a strengthening of State-level institutions. As a result, since the beginning of 2003 the Standing Committee on Military Matters – the institution aimed at bringing together the defense establishments of the two Entities – has been working on building the defense capacity of the State. In addition, NATO formulated four conditions which Bosnia-Herzegovina would have to meet before it could join the Partnership for Peace Program (PfP): democratic control over the armed forces at the State level, establishment of a security and defense policy at the State level, command and control at the State level, and full transparency of defense budgets.32 Both Entity MoDs were confronted with more and more neighboring countries becoming PfP members. Achieving PfP status was expensive for them, as modernization towards NATO standards required higher defense investments. However, it also constituted a chance to receive additional funds and training through NATO, and bilaterally from NATO member states. 163

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Nothing has had a stronger impact on defense reform and the transfer of defense capacities and responsibilities to State-level than one single event in 2002: the Orao affair. It began when SFOR troops entered an aircraft factory in Bijeljina, located on the territory of the Bosnian Serb Republic, on 12 October 2002. SFOR found evidence that spare parts and jet engines for Russian MiG jets had been exported to Iraq, thereby breaking the international arms embargo. Though the exports were channeled through the Yugoslav arms export company Jugoimport, the blame lay with the Orao company from Bijeljina, which had cooperated with various other Serb companies.33 Subsequent disclosures revealed the participation of various Orao ofﬁcials, VRS military structures, and RS politicians.34 The Army Commander of the RS resigned from his post, as did the Serb member of the tripartite BiH Presidency. The scandal was fueled by another incident when it was revealed that the Bosnian Serb intelligence service had spied on international organizations and Federation ofﬁcials, thereby violating speciﬁc provisions of the DPA.35 On 2 April, the High Representative Paddy Ashdown invoked his so-called Bonn Powers36 to remove all mention of statehood from the constitution of the Republika Srpska, and abolished the Supreme Defense Council, the highest military authority in the RS. Orao, however, was not an isolated problem. Other incidents of arms export to Iraq in the Federation showed the root of all these scandals to lie in the systemic weaknesses of the defense provisions of the DPA, and how they had been (mis)used by both Entities’ defense institutions.37 There was a general lack of civilian oversight, democratic control, and transparency in the defense sector both in the Federation and the RS. Specifically, the defense industry seemed to operate outside any significant political State-level control. For the OHR and other international organizations, the Orao scandal constituted a potential catalyst for change, not only in the defense sector but in other sectors as well. Finally, the focus of the international community moved away from the pure reduction talks to a discussion of how to build up a joint army and transfer all responsibilities and structures for defense to the State-level. This broke away from the constraints of the DPA that had been used especially by the RS to conserve its independence and autonomy in many areas. In the case of reforming the BiH defense set-up, the first reaction to the Orao scandal was the establishment of a working group in October 2002, tasked by the OHR to “develop a draft State-level Law on the Import and Export of Weapons and Military Equipment.”38 In addition to that, the OHR and SFOR established the Sarajevo Legal Seminars to address the general systemic weaknesses of the BiH defense set-up. This included the discussion of a State Defense Law which would bring the command and control of the armed forces under State control, a revolutionary move that subsequently took more than two years to be accepted. Finally, on 8 May 2003, the OHR established a Defense Reform Commission (DRC) of Bosnia and Herzegovina, tasked to ensure Euro-Atlantic standards required for the PfP membership. The results of the Sarajevo Legal Seminars 164

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became the basis for the work of the DRC. The standards demanded by the DRC included: 1 2

3 4

democratic and civilian oversight of the armed forces; transfer of responsibility for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the state from the Entities to the collective Presidency, and for deployment of armed forces inside BiH and internationally to the state exclusively; interoperability of defense structures throughout the country; and budgetary affordability.

The DRC was tasked with proposing concrete legislation for ensuring PfP requirements were met. It was also tasked with ﬁnding an acceptable compromise for both Entities and all three ethnic groups. Changes to Entity autonomy as regards control of the defense sector were still widely seen as a violation of the DPA. But the DRC was able to use DPA provisions to prove the legality of the proposed crucial changes, namely the aforementioned Article III (5), authorizing the State to assume responsibilities to preserve the sovereignty, territorial integrity, political independence and international personality of BosniaHerzegovina.39 Additionally, Article III (1) placed responsibility for foreign policy at State-level, while Article III (2) demanded that the Entities provide all necessary means to enable the Bosnian state to fulﬁll its international obligations. The DRC used these linchpins but was also able to create a constructive atmosphere of cooperation within the Commission, which was composed of eleven members including Ministers of Defense of both Entities.40 Although the DRC led to the establishment of State-level defense structures (BiH Ministry of Defence, BiH Staff and Operational Command) and responsibilities, and also increased the level of civilian and democratic control of the armed forces to some extent, it did not abolish the two Ministries of Defense. The entity MoDs continued to exercise the administrative functions of manning, training and providing equipment. The Joint Command in the Federation, as well as the General Staff of the RS, remained in place.41 The day-to-day running of the armed forces thus remained at the Entity level. Although the results of the DRC and the acceptance and implementation of its recommendations constituted a milestone in the reform of the defense sector, the main objective of these reforms was not reached. At NATO’s June 2004 Istanbul Summit, Bosnia-Herzegovina was not considered for PfP membership.42 The two main points for this failure, stressed in the Istanbul Summit Communiqué, were the absence of a single military force and, more importantly, the lack of RS cooperation with the war crimes tribunal in The Hague.43 Not surprisingly, the international community continued to press for a single army. Immediately after the decision at the NATO summit in Istanbul, Paddy Ashdown removed ﬁfty-nine obstructionist Bosnian Serb politicians, mainly for not cooperating with The Hague in the search for fugitive war crimes suspects Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic.44 Nevertheless, increased pressure against 165

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the Republika Srpska helped to overcome some long-term obstacles on various reform issues. With his own term as a High Representative coming to an end in 2005, and his eventual successor less likely to be empowered with executive authority over BiH politics, Paddy Ashdown accelerated the speed of reforms in two signiﬁcant areas: defense and police reform. An OHR decision on 31 December 2004 mandated the creation of a new Defense Reform Commission. The focus of the new DRC was to be the legal obligations of Bosnia-Herzegovina and its two Entities to work towards NATO membership, introduced through Article 80 of the Law on Defense.45 The new DRC’s goal was “the creation of a single defense establishment and a single military force in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”46 While the ﬁrst DRC had been more cooperative in style, the new DRC was under pressure, especially from the OHR and the Commander of SFOR, to reach the “right” conclusions. Through ten DRC Teams and a Legal Working Group, the Commission prepared a thorough template for the reform and restructuring of the armed forces. Its ﬁnal report, published in September 2005, left no doubts about the future Armed Forces. It requires that all Entity defense institutions be closed by the end of 2005; “rightsizing” of the armed forces down to 10,000 professional soldiers;47 that conscription must be abolished; and that the very large military reserves be cut down to only 50 percent of the active forces.48 Although resistance towards a fully integrated, multi-ethnic army continues to be high, the DRC has proposed changes which will lead to de facto multiethnic brigades. There will be three infantry regiments (one Bosnian Serb, one Bosnian Croat and one Bosniak regiment) with three battalions each. While these regiments will continue to wear their insignia and maintain their military heritage (though all will also wear the coat of arms of Bosnia-Herzegovina), these battalions will be distributed to three maneuver brigades, i.e. each maneuver brigade will consist of one Serb, one Croat and one Bosniac battalion.49 In addition, all other regiments, such as engineers, signals, and artillery, will be organized as single, multi-ethnic regiments, the BiH coat of arms their only “national” insignia. Retaining the military heritages of each of the three armed forces – sometimes even those linked to paramilitaries and prosecuted war crime indictees – will continue to hinder the professionalization of military personnel and the development of the single army structure. The decision of the RS National Assembly on 30 August 2005 to endorse the recommendations of the DRC, and the State Parliamentary Assembly passing both the Law on Defence and the Law on Service in the Armed Forces of BiH, effectively abolishes separate RS and Federation Armies as of 1 January 2006. The move redresses one of the biggest ﬂaws of the Dayton Peace Agreement, more than ten years since Dayton was signed. Coupled with concurrent police restructuring measures, there is now room for Bosnia to revise the Constitution laid down in Annex 4, in a joint and cooperative manner, and without additional international pressure.

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Consequences of reform: privatizing war and security Defense reforms in Bosnia, which mostly focused on reduction and discharge of soldiers of the Entity armies, have had some side effects which go beyond Bosnia and the Western Balkans. Former members of wartime paramilitary groups and criminal gangs have turned to some extent to organized crime, while others have become mercenaries in foreign conﬂicts. Discharged personnel of the armies in the Western Balkans, including the VRS and ARBiH, have found new opportunities in the growing market for private security and private military services. Some Bosnian-Muslim ex-combatants went to Chechnya, some to Kosovo in 1998, where they re-encountered Bosnian-Serb paramilitaries who had joined the Yugoslav security forces. Bosnian-Serb mercenaries were known to have fought in Zaire, where they helped stabilize the regime of President Mobutu. But while these cases gained some popularity in news rooms and academic articles, they constituted only a minority phenomenon compared with the growing recruitment of Balkan ex-military and ex-police into private security and private military companies. Private security companies (PSC) are one of the biggest growing markets: by the end of 2005, in Bosnia alone forty-one PSCs were operating, with about 2,000 employees.50 A report on PSCs in the Western Balkans identiﬁed close ties between these security providers, former police, and paramilitary forces.51 The lack of regulation and wide use of small arms and light weapons by these companies, paradoxically, represents heightened security in some sectors while simultaneously introducing an element of insecurity (and to some extent, a new kind of criminal activity) in Western Balkan states. According to the aforementioned report, the sensitivity of the subject has made it “very difﬁcult to ﬁnd direct evidence of connections between private security companies and organised criminal groups and networks.” The report’s authors, however, further indicated that a number of interviewees, “most of whom wished to remain anonymous, did allege that organised criminal groups have established PSCs in order to create a cover to assist them when running protection rackets and other illegal acts.52 PSCs, like most areas of commercial activity, also remain ethnically aligned, further undermining the intent of the peace process overall.53 The post-9/11 development in military outsourcing through private military companies (PMCs) has also emerged as a disturbing trend in BiH and the Western Balkans. While Serbia and Montenegro clearly constitute the biggest provider54 of ex-soldiers, ex-combatants and armed criminals for the growing PMC industry in Iraq and elsewhere, former soldiers in BiH are entering that market, as well.55 Links between PMCs and ex-soldiers of the Entity armed forces are well established, many of whom were trained by MPRI, a US PMC, both during and after the war. PMC recruiters are frequent visitors to Bosnia; especially in the case of Iraq, foreign PMCs value the continuing legacy of longterm ties between the Iraq defense sector and the former Yugoslav one (a link, 167

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interestingly, that was condemned in the case of the Orao scandal). MPRI and others have been known to recruit current and former ARBiH soldiers for Iraq, principally for demining and security tasks.56 Re-integration and support programs of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the World Bank beneﬁt relatively few, so it is not surprising that ex-soldiers turn towards these high-risk but proﬁtable jobs in war zones. It is too early to assess the consequences of this trend: while on the one hand it generates a ﬂow of money from Iraq and other countries to BiH, on the other it hinders the re-integration and resocialization of ex-soldiers. In a country with high proportions of the population suffering from war-induced trauma, returning PMC employees are unlikely to improve Bosnia-Herzegovina’s fragile social fabric.

Conclusions In hindsight, arguments that multiple armies could have been abolished earlier rather than later appear somewhat facile. In reality, both Richard Holbrooke and General Wesley Clark believed the creation of a single national army was feasible but not necessarily desired by the international community. While a high degree of political and military pressure was applied in other areas, less was applied to this particular issue since some NATO members feared the potential for violence, and involvement in serious ﬁghting and the casualties that it would entail. The training and armament provided to the ARBiH and HVO during and after the war – though decisive in helping to end the conﬂict – deﬁnitely added a twist to much needed demilitarization. The international community also failed to provide clear measures for individual disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of combatants. International organizations appeared to be primarily concerned with their own agendas, with the OSCE focusing on Conﬁdence and Security Building Measures, the OHR neglecting the military dimension from the beginning, and IFOR/SFOR only as involved as each national contingent wanted to be. Only when all players ﬁnally began to agree on a common goal – ﬁrst a reduction of forces, and then a single State-level army – that pressure began to yield results. Defense reform, however, has also diverted international community resources from more pressing systemic and Dayton-related problems. For years, both Entities were struggling because of the ﬁnancial burden that their armies placed upon them. Was it worth the effort? Does BosniaHerzegovina really need an army of 10,000 soldiers? And in particular, an army that is still not functioning, well trained or well equipped? Perhaps this need is justiﬁed by the continuing mistrust between the ethnic groups and towards Belgrade, and its random calls for the annexation of the RS into Serbia and Montenegro as compensation for the potential loss of Kosovo. Perhaps the negative experiences of the Bosniaks regarding European military help during the war will keep them from any further reduction or total demilitarization. NATO itself declared that a membership without an army is not possible. With only a small NATO contingent remaining and a rather unpopular and 168

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slowly diminishing EUFOR presence, NATO membership might be the most important security guarantee for Bosnia-Herzegovina. The new Armed Forces of Bosnia-Herzegovina (AFBiH) might therefore continue to struggle for years to come, by reason of its ﬁnancial limitations and internal quarrels between the different ethnic battalions. The privatization of security and the recruitment of discharged soldiers into PMCs abroad are worrisome trends, with potentially negative social consequences and implications for military retention: will the AFBiH be able to retain well-trained ofﬁcers paid only a tenth of what they can make working for PMCs abroad? First experiences with BiH military personnel trained for the removal of mines and unexploded ordnance have shown they leave immediately if they get a good offer from a PMC.57 Nevertheless, the implementation of defense reforms in 2006 will ﬁnally bring Bosnia into PfP. The RS has started a slow, grudging cooperation with the ICTY, which will probably be enough to please NATO and the EU at the moment, although the arrest and extradition of former RS President, Radovan Karadzic, has repeatedly been underlined by US ofﬁcials as a precondition for PfP membership. The joint small units for UN missions will continue to be deployed to Congo, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, and an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit of thirty-six professional soldiers has already been deployed to Iraq. The issue of “ethnic brigades” will vanish over time, as infantries shrink while technical joint units will increase their personnel. Most importantly though, if most of the technical equipment and arms are destroyed or transferred away from BiH, the potential threat of a resumption of hostilities will be signiﬁcantly reduced.

Notes 1 Richard Holbrooke, the chief architect of the Dayton Peace Agreement, stressed this view in a meeting at the American Academy, Berlin, on 8 September 2005, describing the decision of the RS National Assembly as not only a powerful symbol but also an important step for the security in the country. 2 Ten deputies voted against it and four deputies abstained. 3 R. Holbrooke, “A Decade after Dayton. On America’s Path to Intervention in the Balkans,” The Berlin Journal, Issue No. 11, Berlin: The American Academy, 2005, p. 14. 4 The Ofﬁce of the High Representative technically derives its authority from the Security Council, but answers to the Peace Implementation Council, a specially constituted body of ﬁfty-ﬁve countries. 5 The VRS had the strongest link to the JNA, while the other two forces relied on TDF structures and ad hoc formations. 6 A. Heinemann-Grüder and T. Pietz with S. Duffy, Turning Soldiers into a Work Force. Demobilization and Reintegration in Post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bonn: BICC brief 27, 2003, p. 8. 7 M.-J. Calic, Krieg und Frieden in Bosnien-Hercegovina, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1996, p. 99. 8 Heinemann-Grüder and Pietz, Turning Soldiers into a Work Force, p. 9. 9 Bin Laden and the Balkans: the Politics of Anti-Terrorism, Europe Report No. 119, Belgrade, Podgorica et al.: International Crisis Group, 2001, p. 11. 169

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10 Heinemann-Grüder and Pietz, Turning Soldiers into a Work Force, p. 9. 11 World Bank Technical Annex to Bosnia and Herzegovina for an Emergency Demobilization and Reintegration Project (EDPR), Washington D.C.: World Bank, 1996, p. 1. 12 B. Woodward, “Bosnia: Your Tax Dollars at Work,” in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 54, No. 2, 1998. 13 KM stands for Konvertible Mark, Bosnia’s currency, which is tied to the Euro. 14 Heinemann-Grüder and Pietz, Turning Soldiers into a Work Force, p. 11. 15 C. Haupt and J.Fitzgerald, “Negotiations on Defence Reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” in P. Jurekovic and F. Labarre, From Peace Making to Self Sustaining Peace – International Presence in South East Europe at a Crossroads, Vienna: Bundesministerium für Landesverteidigung, 2004, p. 153. The most important linchpin has proven to be Article III (5) (a) of the constitution: “BiH shall assume responsibility for such other matters as are agreed by the Entities; are provided for in Annexes 5 through 8 to the General Framework Agreement; or are necessary to preserve the sovereignty, territorial integrity, political independence, and international personality of BiH, in accordance with the division of responsibilities between the institutions of BiH. Additional institutions may be established as necessary to carry out such responsibilities.” 16 R. Holbrooke, Meine Mission. Vom Krieg zum Frieden in Bosnien, München, Zürich: Piper, 1998, p. 554. 17 C. Bildt, Peace Journey. The Struggle for Peace in Bosnia, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998, p. 135. 18 Dayton Peace Accords, Annex 1-B, Regional Stabilization, see also H. Vetschera, “Military Stabilization and Arms Control in BiH Five Years after the Dayton Agreement (Part I),” Österreichische Militärische Zeitschrift, No. 3, 2001a., pp. 311–318 and H. Vetschera, “Military Stabilization and Arms Control in BiH Five Years after the Dayton Agreement (Part II),” Österreichische Militärische Zeitschrift, No. 4, 2001b, pp. 465–472. 19 Heinemann-Grüder and Pietz, Turning Soldiers into a Work Force, p. 11. 20 For more details, see Vetschera, “Military Stabilization and Arms Control in BiH Five Years after the Dayton Agreement (Part I),” Österreichische Militärische Zeitschrift, p. 314. 21 Holbrooke, Meine Mission. Vom Krieg zum Frieden in Bosnien, p. 124. 22 Holbrooke, Meine Mission. Vom Krieg zum Frieden in Bosnien, p. 126. 23 The Contact Group, constituted by France, Germany, Russia, the UK, and the U.S., was established on 26 April 1994 to coordinate international efforts to settle the Bosnian conﬂict. 24 M. O’Connor, “US to Supply Muslim-Croat Army with 116 Large Cannon,” New York Times, 10 May 1997. 25 Vetschera, “Military Stabilization and Arms Control in BiH Five Years after the Dayton Agreement (Part II),” Österreichische Militärische Zeitschrift, p. 467. 26 As the Bosniaks always strongly opposed this option a lot of international pressure would have been needed as well as a guaranteed long-term international military presence. 27 J. A. King, A. W. Dorn, and M. Hodes, An Unprecendented Experiment: Security Sector Reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Report. London, Bonn: Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC) and Saferworld, 2002, p. 12. 28 Two World Bank projects and a still ongoing project of the International Organization for Migration have provided re-integration services for redundant military personnel for over US$50 million. However, altogether only about 20,000 individuals beneﬁted from their various activities and support packages; not much in a country where over 400,000 individuals had been mobilized into the different armed groups.

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29 According to Jeremy King, Bosnian-Muslim combatants went to Chechnya and Kosovo; Bosnian-Serb paramilitaries joined the Yugoslav security forces in Kosovo in 1998, and went to Zaire where they helped to prop up the regime of President Mobutu Sese Seko (King et al., An Unprecedented Experiment, pp. 10f.). 30 M. Jazbec, “Defense Reform in the Western Balkans: The Way Ahead,” Geneva: Geneva Center for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, 2004, p. 8. 31 The document was prepared in cooperation with the OHR Military Cell. 32 E. Zukanovic, “PFP’s Contributions to Preventing or Managing Future Crises,” Paper of the Standing Committee on Military Matters prepared for the PFP Workshop on Defence Policy and Strategy. Geneva, 11–12 October 2001. 33 G. Knezevic, “A Yugoslav Iraq-gate: how the Serbian eagle ﬂew to help Saddam,” Bosnia Report, No. 32–34, Sarajevo: The Bosnian Institute, 2003. 34 D. Marash, “Saddam’s Serb Supplier: How our last enemy has been arming our next one,” Washington Monthly, March 2003. 35 For a closer description of these scandals and consequences see various issues of the Balkan Crisis Report of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (http://www.iwpr.net). 36 The “Bonn Powers” of the HR originate from a PIC meeting in Bonn on November 1997. There, the decision was made that the HR could implement the DPA by superseding local authority and imposing laws and policies. Moreover, the HR was allowed to exercise removal or suspension of obstructionist politicians or personnel from administrations. 37 Haupt and Fitgerald, “Negotiations on Defence Reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” p. 164. 38 Ibid., pp. 164–167. 39 The Path to Partnership for Peace. Report of the Defense Reform Commission, Sarajevo: Ofﬁce of the High Representative, 2003, pp. 2–3. 40 Haupt and Fitzgerald, “Negotiations on Defence Reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” pp. 166–168. 41 For a detailed description of the whole process and negotiations of the ﬁrst Defense Reform Commission in 2003 see Haupt and Fitzgerald, “Negotiations on Defence Reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina.” 42 The assessment of NATO in Istanbul read that NATO welcomes “Bosnia and Herzegovina’s signiﬁcant progress in defense reform, a key condition for PfP membership. We urge continued progress towards achieving a single military force. We have agreed to designate a Contact Point Embassy in Sarajevo to increase understanding of NATO. We are concerned that Bosnia and Herzegovina, particularly obstructionist elements in the Republika Srpska entity, has failed to live up to its obligation to cooperate fully with ICTY, including the arrest and transfer to the jurisdiction of the Tribunal of war crimes indictees, a fundamental requirement for the country to join PfP. We also look for systemic changes necessary to develop effective security and law enforcement structures” (Istanbul Summit Communique, Article 34). 43 It was uncovered that the former VRS General Ratko Mladic had been on the payroll of the VRS until 2002. 44 After this move, Paddy Ashdown told reporters that “The Serb Republic has been in the grip of a small band of corrupt politicians and criminals for far too long” (Washington Post, 1 July 2004). 45 AFBiH: A Single Military Force for the 21st Century. Report of the Defense Reform Commission, Sarajevo: Ofﬁce of the High Representative, 2005, p. 1. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid., pp. 1–7. 48 The “Passive Reserve” up until now constituted 40,000 reservists from the VF and

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49 50 51 52 53 54 55

56 57

20,000 from the VRS. The abolishment of the passive reserve and conscription, and the further reduction of the active forces, though an important step for sustainable peace, are going to create a different security problem: there will not be enough military personnel to safeguard all military barracks and depots. In addition, a huge amount of surplus equipment, especially small arms and light weapons, and ammunition are waiting for destruction as the BiH presidency has agreed on a moratorium on the export of surplus arms. If not secured, these weapons could easily increase the already existing ﬂow of illegal weapons in the Balkans and beyond. AFBiH: A Single Military Force for the 21st Century, pp. 7–10. Z. Taylor et al., SALW and Private Security Companies in South Eastern Europe: A Cause or Effect of Insecurity? Belgrade: SEESAC, Saferworld, International Alert, 2005, p. 34. Ibid., p. ii. Ibid., p. 21. All PSCs in Bosnia employ mono-ethnic workforces, thereby perpetuating the ethnic divisions that operate on a larger scale throughout the country. Estimates see between 500 to 1,000 Serbs working for PMCs in Iraq, see V. P. Zimonjic, IRAQ: Balkans Soldiers Find Fortune in Baghdad, Belgrade: IPS, 12 May 2005. Former Serb Red Berets in Iraq, UPI, 7 November 2005. The Red Berets were involved in major atrocities in the Balkan wars and also in the assassination of the former Serb Prime Minister Djindjic; see also T. Pietz, “The Shaky Road Towards Partnership for Peace. Military Reform in Serbian and Montenegro with NATO in Mind,” in Security Sector Reform in Southeast Europe, Bonn: ZEI SOE Monitor, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2004, pp. 2–4. This information was provided to the author by a friend and former soldier of the ARBiH who attended such a meeting with MPRI in Tuzla in August 2005. Author interview with UNDP representative, Sarajevo, August 2005.

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9 THE LIMITS OF POST-CONFLICT POLICE REFORM Timothy Donais

At the end of 2002, the United Nations Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH) declared victory and closed up shop. In its ﬁnal press release, the mission – which had been tasked with transforming the country’s politically compromised, ethnically biased and deeply corrupt police into a modern, democratic police force – stated that “Bosnia and Herzegovina now has ‘a police force ﬁt for Europe’ ﬁrmly based on international standards of democratic policing and in the service of all citizens.”1 Anyone familiar both with the UN’s recent history in the Balkans and the glacial pace at which peace is being consolidated in Bosnia may be forgiven for dismissing the UN’s triumphant claims as combining equal parts propaganda and hyperbole. Yet it would be equally unfair to assess as insigniﬁcant the contribution of the UN’s International Police Task Force (IPTF) to stabilizing the security situation in Bosnia and advancing the country’s peace process. While it is clearly an overstatement to suggest that Bosnia’s police are now models of effective, democratic policing, the IPTF – and to a lesser extent its successor, the European Union Police Mission (EUPM) – have induced signiﬁcant change in a set of policing structures deeply implicated in the ethnically charged brutality of the wartime period. This chapter examines the international police reform effort in Bosnia within the broader context of the country’s post-conﬂict peacebuilding process launched in the aftermath of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords. Focusing primarily on the record of the IPTF, it explores the structural weaknesses and political constraints that limited the success of the mission, as well as the factors that allowed it to overcome some of its early failures. The primary argument to be advanced here is that Bosnia’s police forces have in a sense been “paciﬁed”; they no longer pose, for the most part, a signiﬁcant public security threat, even if they remain far from becoming the impartial guarantors of public security envisioned by their international mentors. While the combined efforts of the EUPM and IPTF have transformed (and continue to transform) the form and structure of policing in post-Dayton Bosnia, and have purged the country’s police ranks of 173

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both the criminal and the incompetent, in important ways Bosnia’s police continue to reﬂect the country’s unresolved political struggles and the uncertain commitment of its political elites to Western notions of the rule of law. More broadly, this chapter is underpinned by the belief that the public security dimensions of Bosnia’s post-Dayton adventure are crucial to any effort to understand the country’s security jigsaw. In some respects, the policing aspect of Bosnia’s peace process is even more signiﬁcant given the early and comprehensive success of NATO in denying the conﬂict parties recourse to military force as part of the ongoing struggle over Bosnia’s future. With the country’s territorial integrity at least temporarily secured and its various military forces conﬁned to their barracks, the focus necessarily shifted from questions of state and military security to questions of public security, an area in which NATO’s peacekeepers were much more reluctant to tread. Indeed, if Dayton represented more a ceaseﬁre than a permanent settlement, the decade since Dayton has seen the ongoing conﬂict play out in large part at the level of individual communities, both through elections and through the effort to return the ethnically cleansed to their pre-war homes. In this process, questions of public security have been crucial, and both international and local police have been essential players in this unfolding drama. At the same time, the sustainability of the peace process in Bosnia can be measured, to a large extent, by the degree to which the rule of law has taken hold. Here, the post-Dayton record is decidedly uneven. While few seriously worry about the dangers of renewed warfare among Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks, the persistence and prevalence of organized crime and corruption – and the seeming impotence of either international or domestic actors in the face of these phenomena – are now seen as among the country’s most signiﬁcant security challenges. In short, the restoration of effective public security provision – and the politics of public security more broadly – represent a key dynamic in the ongoing struggle to move Bosnia along the path towards sustainable peace.

Minding the security gap: policing and peacebuilding in Bosnia Any discussion of the role of international policing in post-Dayton Bosnia must begin with the IPTF’s original mandate, which by almost any standards was dismally inadequate for the task at hand. The verbs deployed under Annex 11 of the Dayton Peace Accords, which sets out the terms of the IPTF mission, are hardly authoritative, ranging from monitoring, observing, and advising, to training, facilitating, and assessing. The UN’s police monitors were to be unarmed, and their authority was meant to be moral rather than coercive. Not only were they not empowered to enforce the law, their leverage in compelling Bosnia’s own police forces to enforce the law was severely limited. Far from being a negotiating oversight, the UN’s policing mandate was a source of considerable discussion at Dayton. The United States’ chief negotiator, 174

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Richard Holbrooke, favoured giving the IPTF full powers of arrest, on the grounds that the Bosnian police represented, in most cases, the most extreme elements within each ethnic community. The US Pentagon, on the other hand, opposed a strong international police mandate out of a concern that the NATOled Implementation Force (IFOR) would quickly become the emergency-call service of an intrusive yet insufﬁciently robust IPTF.2 Ultimately, the latter argument carried the day, leaving the IPTF as one of the weakest links of the international community’s peacebuilding chain in Bosnia. In the early days of post-Dayton implementation, the UN’s questionable authority on policing matters was compounded by slow deployment, uneven quality of personnel, and organizational inertia. By March 1996, the UN had less than 400 monitors on the ground, out of an authorized strength of over 1,700, while it was well into 1997 before the mission had sufﬁcient logistical support in place, including communications, vehicles, and interpreters.3 At the same time, incorporating police personnel from dozens of disparate UN member states into a coherent force for reform proved, as elsewhere, to be a major challenge, particularly since the qualiﬁcations of many IPTF monitors themselves were suspect. Many ofﬁcers, and in particular those from the developing world, arrived unable to drive or speak English, while donor country recruiting practices meant that not even “developed” countries offered their best and brightest. As one former IPTF Deputy Commissioner said of his colleagues, “I wondered how they were ever a policeman in their own countries, let alone as models for Bosnia.”4 Compounding these factors was the reality that many IPTF monitors weren’t sure why they were there or what their role was, beyond monitoring, reporting, and acting as good examples for local police. While the IPTF’s early difﬁculties and ﬂimsy powers evoked considerable derision and mirth from locals and internationals alike, the implications of the mission’s liabilities were deadly serious. The ﬁrst real test of the international community’s post-Dayton security arrangements came in early 1996 when, as per Dayton’s provisions, a number of Sarajevo suburbs were transferred from Serb to Muslim-Croat control. Despite early hopes that the Serb inhabitants of these suburbs would remain and thereby demonstrate the viability of renewed ethnic co-existence, a combination of fear and pressure from their own political leadership caused the vast majority of the area’s Serbs to ﬂee into Serb-held territory. Both IFOR and the IPTF largely stood aside and watched as a pattern of theft, destruction, violence, and ﬂight accompanied the territorial transfers in scenes eerily reminiscent of wartime ethnic cleansing. As Louis Sell has suggested, the episode underlined in stark terms the nature of Bosnia’s postwar security gap: “If IFOR was unwilling to undertake police activities and IPTF was unable to do so, that left only the police of the parties, who were themselves part of the problem.”5 Despite some variations, this basic dynamic has characterized the security situation across much of Bosnia for the better part of the post-Dayton period. Unable to rely on the superior ﬁrepower of NATO’s Stabilization Force (SFOR, 175

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which replaced IFOR at the beginning of 1997), and incapable of eliciting professional police behavior from their local counterparts through moral suasion and basic training, the IPTF struggled to make a positive impact on the security situation at a local level. The political implications of this struggle have been profound. Chronic local-level insecurity has been a major factor in Bosnia’s postwar electoral experience, as the country’s nationalists have maintained power through much of the post-Dayton period by appealing to the fears and insecurities of their ethnic constituencies. Community-level insecurity also explains why efforts to facilitate the return of the ethnically cleansed to areas controlled by another ethnic group – so-called minority returns – bore so little fruit for the ﬁrst four years of the peace process. Simply put, potential minority returnees were justiﬁably suspicious of the international community’s ability, or the local police’s willingness, to protect their basic human rights. Those courageous enough to return were often subject to harassment, intimidation, and violence, if not at the hands of the local police then with their implicit blessing, as evidenced by the generalized failure to bring to justice those guilty of crimes against minorities. As late as 2001, an assessment mission of the UN Development Program concluded that resistance to reform on the part of the local parties, combined with the IPTF’s inability to impose change, made Bosnia’s police reform efforts largely “a story of tremendous effort with minimal results.”6 While much has been made of the IPTF’s ﬂawed mandate, the larger problem at work in Bosnia’s police reform process has been the highly politicized nature of policing in the country, and the reality that its ethnically divided police forces are deeply embedded in the nationalist power structures that still wield predominant political power. As the International Crisis Group noted in a 1999 report, The primary purpose of the police forces is to enforce social and political order, as deﬁned by the ruling political parties. Crime prevention is a secondary, and often, largely overlooked function. Police forces maintain a reputation for corruption, brutality, lawlessness, and often, as the private armies of ruling ethnic parties.7 With their military activities highly circumscribed by NATO’s overpowering presence, the police represent the most visible and effective form of coercive power for each of the ruling parties, for whom the post-Dayton period has very much been a continuation of the conﬂict by other means. This, of course, explains why resistance to deep and thorough restructuring and reform by local political elites has therefore been the rule rather than the exception at all levels of the reform process. The challenges posed by domestic resistance to the police reform agenda have been further compounded by the fractured nature of the Bosnian political space.8 The country’s law enforcement agencies are divided both geographically and functionally, with no less than seventeen separate police forces, little centralized coordination, and precious little inter-agency 176

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cooperation, and only recently have questions of rationalizing policing structures come onto the agenda of the international community.9 Thus, while the structure of policing in Bosnia is amenable to ethnicized political control, it is less conducive to effective law enforcement, as criminals often escape justice simply by crossing jurisdictional boundaries. And while impressive numbers of local police ofﬁcers have passed through internationally organized training courses on topics such as “democratic policing” and “human dignity,” such training can hardly be expected to alter long-standing policing patterns or sever the links between policing and Bosnia’s divisive ethnic politics. Writing in 2001, the criminologist David Bayley suggested that one of the key lessons to be learned from international efforts to promote democratic police reforms abroad is that unless both the government and the police force of the target state are seriously committed to reform, it will not happen.10 Bosnia, then, appears as a classic case of good intentions dashed on the rocks of host country intransigence. In this sense, the glacial progress of police reform is not solely the failure of a disorganized and underpowered IPTF, but rather the failure of the entire Dayton project to change the logic of Bosnian politics from one of confrontation to one of collaboration. While unable of its own accord to alter the underlying dynamics of Bosnian politics, from about 1998 onwards the IPTF began to accrue some real authority, particularly in the areas of human rights investigations and force restructuring, that gradually gave the mission leverage in pushing forward its police reform agenda.11 These increased powers are rooted in decisions taken in 1996, notably the Bonn-Petersberg agreement on restructuring the police in the BiH Federation (a similar agreement concerning the police in Republika Srpska was reached only at the end of 1998), and UN Security Council Resolution 1088, which tasked the IPTF with “investigating or assisting with investigations into human rights abuses by law enforcement personnel.”12 While the restructuring agreement gave the IPTF the authority to screen individual police ofﬁcers and weed out those deemed to have committed war crimes or to be otherwise unﬁt for police duty, the human rights mandate empowered the mission to de-authorize police ofﬁcers guilty of repeated cases of misconduct. Both initiatives were slow to get off the ground, and the powers embedded within them were used sparingly, inconsistently, and in general ineffectively for a considerable period. Over time, however, the IPTF’s authority to screen and to de-certify gradually became the mission’s most powerful weapon in the struggle to re-make Bosnia’s police forces. Combined with the growing authority of the international community’s High Representative in Bosnia to impose legislation and remove “anti-Dayton” political leaders, by about 1999 the IPTF’s powers to de-authorize individual police ofﬁcers and restructure police forces were beginning to have a noticeable impact on the security situation across the country. At the micro level, the stick of de-certiﬁcation gradually exerted a disciplining effect on local police. Even though only 150 ofﬁcers were dismissed between October 1998 and June 2002 for professional misconduct, human rights 177

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violations, or wartime activities,13 the threat of de-authorization in cases of ﬂagrant misconduct was often enough to discourage abusive or discriminatory police behaviour. Indeed, this power was often the only way of keeping local police in line. As one IPTF ofﬁcer noted, “without the power to de-authorise, we would never be able to get the police to do what we want them to do.”14 At the same time, the process of registering and certifying all local law enforcement personnel not only facilitated the gradual reduction of uniformed Bosnian police from a post-war high of some 45,000 to approximately 16,000 today, it also constituted a screening process through which the incompetent, the corrupt, and those implicated in war crimes could be purged.15 Even these powers, however, have been revealed as limited. With regard to de-authorizations, IPTF’s authority extended only to those individuals exercising police powers, so in many cases de-authorized police ofﬁcers were simply shufﬂed into other positions. In other cases, dismissed ofﬁcers have continued to exert inﬂuence and power from the sidelines, such as the case of the dismissed chief of police in Stolac, who was regularly seen lunching with, and presumably providing advice and direction to, his successor.16 More generally, ofﬁcers removed from their duties because of negligence or criminality have rarely faced criminal charges.17 Regarding certiﬁcation, there is reason to be skeptical of the thoroughness of the process, particularly during its ﬁnal stages, when the IPTF rushed to complete ﬁnal certiﬁcation of all police personnel before its mandate expired. A third element of the IPTF’s reform effort – with potentially enormous implications for community-level security – was minority police recruitment. At war’s end, Bosnia’s ethnic divisions were reﬂected in its mono-ethnic policing structures, and it was recognized early in the peace process that the return of refugees and displaced persons to their former homes would be greatly facilitated through a “multi-ethniﬁcation” process among local police forces. In other words, “the aim of minority recruitment is to help roll back ‘ethnic cleansing’ by offering returnees and would-be returnees some assurance that ‘their’ people are represented among the guardians of law and order in their former towns and villages.”18 Within the Federation, the Bonn-Petersberg agreement stipulated that the composition of local police forces was to reﬂect pre-war ethnic breakdowns. In Republika Srpska (RS), more modest goals were established, with the interior ministry obliged to set demographic targets in line with the participation levels of Bosnia’s three constituent peoples in the 1997 municipal elections. In practice, these agreements mean that in the Federation, fully 28 percent of police are to be drawn from minority communities, while the corresponding ﬁgure for the RS is 20 percent.19 Unsurprisingly, meeting these targets has proven to be even more difﬁcult than setting them. Not only is minority recruitment politically sensitive, but for a variety of political and socio-economic reasons, minority police ofﬁcers haven’t been keen to cross entity or cantonal boundaries to work alongside, and under the supervision of, wartime foes. In many cases, there are good reasons for this 178

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reluctance: hand grenades have been thrown into houses of minority police ofﬁcers in some RS municipalities, while in many cases minority ofﬁcers are not issued ﬁrearms or have been assigned to marginal or secondary roles. Recent ﬁgures suggest that minorities represent some 10 percent of police personnel across the country, although this ﬁgure may be inﬂated somewhat by the inclusion of the newly constituted and fully multi-ethnic State Border Service.20 While imperfect, the IPTF’s reworked powers have added considerable momentum to the police reform process over the past few years, and this has translated directly into marked improvements in local police performance, as well as higher levels of overall public security. The best indicator of Bosnia’s improved security situation is the growing numbers of war-displaced who have recently returned to live as minorities in their pre-war communities. While total minority returns between 1996 and 1999 were a disappointing 127,000, more than 261,000 minority returns took place between 2000 and 2002, reﬂecting a long-awaited “breakthrough” in efforts to reverse ethnic cleansing.21 While it is now clear that the minority return process will not recreate Bosnia’s pre-war multiethnic patchwork, the surge in recent minority returns does indicate that minorities increasingly feel safe returning to their pre-war municipalities. This growing conﬁdence is reinforced by a decline in “security incidents” affecting returnee communities: there were 277 such incidents reported in 2003, down from 430 in 2002, and only 38 of these incidents involved assault or other direct violence.22 While violence directed against returnees still sends a powerful message to minority communities and remains a source of concern, the overall trend is clearly downward. At the same time, signiﬁcant returns have occurred even in so-called “black holes” of ethnic extremism. In the municipality of Foca, for example, long considered one of the strongest redoubts of hardline nationalism in the RS and a haven for war criminals, minority returnees now number in the thousands. Whereas a few years ago not even international ofﬁcials felt safe in Foca, most returnees now consider the security situation to be the least of their problems, as they struggle to rebuild their homes and to sustain themselves economically.23 The story is similar in other former trouble spots, such as Drvar in the Federation and Zvornik in eastern Republika Srpska.24 While the recent spike in minority returns speaks volumes about improvements in local-level security, polling data reﬂect a more mixed picture regarding public security and policing. A returnee monitoring study undertaken in 2000 by the Ofﬁce of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees found, for example, that 72 percent of minority returnees surveyed in Republika Srpska expressed trust in the local police, even if they would have preferred more minority police ofﬁcers in their areas and greater attention paid to prosecuting perpetrators of crimes against minorities.25 A less positive story, however, emerges from the UN Development Program’s Early Warning Report for 2002. While levels of public satisfaction with police assistance vary by region and demographic, the least satisﬁed, by a considerable margin, were minority communities in both Croat and 179

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Serb majority areas, with respectively 79 and 84 percent expressing some degree of unhappiness with the way in which the police dealt with their concerns.26 More generally, internal SFOR surveys from mid-2001 found that less than half of all respondents felt police professionalism was higher than in the pre-war period, while only four in ten respondents felt that police treated all citizens equally.27 The widespread ambivalence towards Bosnia’s police forces, particularly among minority communities, reﬂects the reality that while police no longer pose a direct threat to minorities, policing in Bosnia is far from blind to ethnicity. Far too often, police either fail to investigate or deliberately bungle investigations of crimes committed against minorities. The International Crisis Group noted in mid-2002 that in many municipalities, police “still fail to treat attacks on returnees and their property, including murders, as crimes, even when considerable international pressure is brought to bear on police and prosecutors.”28 In the case of a fatal shooting of a 16-year-old Bosniak returnee in Vlasenica in mid-2001, for example, the initial police investigation both ignored and covered up crucial evidence. Weeks earlier, police in Banja Luka stood aside as a Serb mob disrupted an attempt to re-lay the cornerstone of the city’s historic Ferhadija Mosque, and displayed a determined indifference to investigating or prosecuting the organizers of the riot. Both cases suggest that in parts of the country at least, the rule of law exists selectively at best.29 While the effort to “multi-ethnify” Bosnia’s police forces has so far produced modest rewards, even less progress has been made towards transforming Bosnia’s police into an effective force in the battle against organized crime and corruption. Despite growing recognition of the problem and promises of swift action, precious little has been achieved in the last few years in terms of reining in what senior international ofﬁcials now regularly refer to as “the dangerous and debilitating nexus of criminals and politicians.”30 For their part, Bosnia’s police remain both implicated and complicit. Poorly paid local police are still eminently corruptible, and are often either directly involved in illegal economic activity or easily bribed to ignore well-organized smuggling operations or highly developed networks of human trafﬁcking, drug-dealing, and prostitution.31 Further, because of a mix of jurisdictional divisions, nationalist sympathies, limited resources and a long-standing tradition of protecting their political masters, local police have to date been both unwilling and unable to address illegal high-level criminal activities involving corrupt nationalist politicians and powerful organized criminal elements. For its part, the IPTF was also ill equipped to contribute to an effective campaign against organized crime and corruption. Deployed on relatively short rotations, lacking tools such as the ability to pay informants or use wiretaps, and largely ignorant of the local language and informal power structures, IPTF monitors found themselves with “little leverage or ability to get behind the scenes and alter the relationship between nationalist power brokers, organized crime, and local law enforcement.”32 In areas such as human trafﬁcking, while the 180

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UN’s Special Trafﬁcking Operations Program (STOP) did produce some positive results in terms of freeing and assisting trafﬁcking victims, overall numbers of convictions remain small and penalties lenient. Even more troubling, the credibility of the UN’s anti-trafﬁcking efforts was dealt a serious blow by allegations that UN personnel frequented brothels and nightclubs where trafﬁcked women were on offer.33 And while the EU has now taken over from NATO on the peacekeeping front and from the UN on the policing front, neither EUFOR nor the EUPM are conﬁgured or mandated to address questions of organized crime. Despite early indications that the ﬁght against organized crime would be a major priority for EUFOR, in practice the EU mission has taken the same hands-off attitude towards the issue as its NATO predecessors. Similarly, to the despair of many Bosnians the EUPM has reverted to the same monitoring and advising role adopted by the IPTF in its early years, and in the words of one EUPM ofﬁcial, “doesn’t do organized crime.”34 At the same time, despite the consistent refrain from high-level UN ofﬁcials, such as Special Representative Jacques Klein, that “politics must be kept out of policing,”35 neither the IPTF nor its successor mission has completely overcome domestic resistance to this idea. The centrepiece of UN efforts to de-politicize Bosnia’s police services was the police commissioner’s project, aimed at establishing non-political directors of police operations at both entity and cantonal levels. The project was ﬁercely opposed by Bosnia’s ruling classes from its inception in 2000, and the extent to which the ruling parties still see the police as key instruments of their own power is visible from their vigorous efforts to circumvent, co-opt, marginalize, and control the new commissioners.36 Ultimately, the UN accepted signiﬁcant compromises to move the project forward, and acknowledged toward the end of its mandate that the initiative had not yet generated the desired impact. As Klein himself noted, It is . . . of deep concern that some Ministers of Interior and members of political parties are seeking to exercise undue pressure on some of the Police Commissioners . . . Recent threats against them and their families must draw the strongest condemnation.37 In sum, the overall picture that emerges from nearly a full decade of police reform efforts is that in terms of community-level security, local police are no longer part of the problem, even if they are only gradually becoming part of the solution. By and large, the Bosnian police today are no longer serial human rights abusers, nor do they engage in widespread abuse or intimidation of minority communities. Combined with other developments, such as the growing number of indicted war criminals under arrest and increasingly aggressive moves by the international community to impose legislation, enforce property rights, and remove obstructionist ofﬁcials, IPTF efforts have gradually created a more benign and permissive environment for ethnic co-existence and human security across Bosnia. With regard to police reform speciﬁcally, the resistance 181

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on the part of nationalist leaders and the police forces under their control to any meaningful reform suggests that the IPTF in particular must be given a great deal of credit for any improvements in policing practice and community-level policing. While the IPTF’s most signiﬁcant accomplishment has been to ensure that local police forces no longer pose a systemic threat to human security, largely through purging police departments of the criminal and the incompetent and encouraging restraint and professionalism among those who remained, in other areas the IPTF legacy is more superﬁcial than substantive. The notion of ethnically neutral community policing is still a foreign concept across Bosnia, while the effort to build a ﬁrewall between an apolitical police apparatus and its political masters remains, at best, a work in progress. Nor have Bosnia’s police forces shown themselves to be yet prepared to contribute to the internationally led ﬁght against organized crime and corruption in Bosnia. While the security implications of these unﬁnished reform projects are less dramatic than in other areas of the police reform agenda, they are no less real. At the end of 2002, the task of ensuring that Bosnia’s policing structures become, in both in culture and practice, genuinely “fit for Europe,” was handed over to the EUPM. The arrival of the EUPM was greeted with considerable skepticism, since both the mandate and the approach of the mission appeared to represent a retreat from the more robust posture adopted by the IPTF in its later years. While the EUPM has, in fact, accomplished little over the course of its mandate, its task was not made any easier by the decisive return to power of Bosnia’s main nationalist parties in October 2002.38 The latter development signaled something of a return to “business as usual” within Bosnian politics, characterized by a much less accommodating attitude towards sweeping reform agendas. Given these depressing developments, in July 2004 the international community took measures to regain the police reform initiative, and to squarely address the politics of policing in Bosnia, through the establishment of the Police Restructuring Commission (PRC). On the one hand, the formation of the PRC represents an acknowledgement of the failure of previous reform efforts to create a neutral, professional Bosnian police service. As the Commission noted in its final report, its very existence was necessitated by the growing recognition that policing in Bosnia remains ineffective, uncoordinated, ethnically and administratively fragmented, politicized, and financially unsustainable. Faced with criminals who are themselves united, well-resourced, and able to operate with near impunity, “these systemic deficiencies result in a system incapable of dealing effectively with complex crimes, including organized crime, corruption, and trafficking in drugs and human beings.”39 Backed by the European Union, which has made deep and meaningful police restructuring a condition for beginning negotiations with Bosnia on a Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA), the PRC’s final report of December 2004 offered a wide-ranging set of recommendations for transform182

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ing policing in Bosnia. Among other things, the report proposed establishing a single Police Service of Bosnia-Herzegovina, under the overall political oversight of the state-level Ministry of Security. At the same time, in addition to already-existing state-level policing services such as the State Border Service and the State Information and Protection Agency, the commission proposed the creation of a series of Local Police Areas covering the entire territory of Bosnia, with jurisdictional boundaries determined not by existing political or entity boundaries, but on the basis of geography and administrative efficiency.40 By early 2005, however, the international approach to questions of police reform had shifted from proposal-making to ultimatum-setting. Using the SAA process as both carrot and stick, international ofﬁcials made it increasingly clear that unless Bosnia committed to three EU-established criteria on policy reform – exclusive state-level competence over police matters, no political interference in policing, and jurisdictional boundaries for police work determined on the basis of functional rather than political considerations – the country would proceed no further down the EU accession path. Unsurprisingly, both the PRC recommendations and the EU criteria have proven controversial, not least because they appear to directly contradict Bosnia’s constitution, which makes law enforcement (with the exception of inter-entity and international crime) an entity-level responsibility. The consequence has been widespread suspicion and resistance, particularly in Republika Srpska, where many feel that the police restructuring process is part of a slippery slope that will lead to the abolition of the RS Ministry of Interior and ultimately the RS itself. While the international community has been active in trying to allay fears that police restructuring will undermine entity powers (although it unquestionably will), it has also left no doubt that the failure of both entity and state parliaments to approve the reform plan will carry signiﬁcant costs in terms of Bosnia’s aspirations to move towards closer relations with the European Union. After months of difﬁcult negotiations, the RS leadership ﬁnally blinked. On 6 October 2005, the RS National Assembly voted to accept the EU’s three principles, paving the way for the EU to announce its readiness to begin SAA negotiations. Since the RSNA vote came only after months of intense outside pressure, and couldn’t in any meaningful way be seen to represent a genuine change of heart on the part of the Bosnian Serb political leadership, the international community moved quickly to prevent any backsliding. In a statement issued the same day as the RSNA decision, the Ofﬁce of the High Representative emphasized that “there must be no confusion about what this means . . . within ﬁve years BiH will have a single integrated police service at the state level, and local police areas which will cross the IEBL [inter-entity boundary line] in the limited areas where it is technically necessary.”41 The agreement on police reform is unquestionably a sign of progress, and marks an important milestone in the process of shifting Bosnia from the agenda 183

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of Dayton to the agenda of Brussels. Given the way in which the agreement was reached, however, serious questions remain concerning the commitment of local (and particularly Serb) authorities to the principles of impartial, apolitical policing, and whether commitments made on paper can transformed into functional reforms in reality. While the ultimate signiﬁcance of the agreement for policing in Bosnia may not be clear for some time, the entire episode underlines the extent to which policing, as with all other aspects of power and authority relations in post-Dayton Bosnia, remains deeply political.

Lessons learned In many ways, the story of the International Police Task Force illustrates the profound transformation of an international organization in the face of major adversity. Over the course of its mandate, the IPTF managed to shed its image as the keystone cop of the international community and make a real contribution to human security and peacebuilding in Bosnia. By the end of 2002, the UN police mission could legitimately claim at least some credit for improvements in the local security situation, changes which permitted hundreds of thousands of wardisplaced to return to their homes in relative safety. This shift, in turn, is gradually altering the political dynamic within Bosnia from the ground up, as renewed contacts among formerly warring communities foster a growing sense that interethnic co-existence is possible, and undermine nationalist messages of fear and intolerance. This type of bottom-up peacebuilding, underpinned by a growing sense of human security, may ultimately prove more effective and more sustainable than peacebuilding strategies that emphasize elite co-optation. While these achievements allow the UN to legitimately point to the IPTF as a success story, conditions both internal and external to the mission make it, at best, a qualiﬁed success. Like many other international organizations in Bosnia, the UN police mission was slow off the mark in the immediate postwar period, and burdened by the combination of an ambitious mandate, anemic authority, and a personnel roster of uneven quality. While many of these issues were gradually addressed over the course of the mission, the reality that domestic political and law enforcement actors have been antagonists rather than partners in the international effort to reform and professionalize Bosnia’s police forces meant that not even additional international authority has been sufﬁcient to engender a deep transformation in the culture and practice of law enforcement in Bosnia. While individual ofﬁcers and their superiors can be disciplined by the exercise of international authority, transforming the complex networks of economic and political power in which Bosnia’s police forces remain embedded cannot be achieved by external inducement alone. One of the enduring lessons of the international police reform experiment in Bosnia, therefore, is that imposed reforms will inevitably be limited, incomplete and of questionable sustainability. Whether the recent agreement on police reform can disprove this lesson, and generate a self-sustaining and locally owned reform process, remains to be seen. 184

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Perhaps unsurprisingly given the environment in which it was working, over the IPTF’s lifetime its mandate became both more limited and more robust. While gradually accruing the necessary powers to carry out its core tasks of restructuring and professionalizing, a recognition of the inherent limits to reform imposed by politics led the UN mission to concentrate “on a narrower agenda of ensuring that the police forces are counted, more representative, better trained, and purged of human rights violators and known criminals.”42 While the UN mission was a clear success when measured against these criteria, its record was more mixed in relation to the IPTF’s stated goal of changing the primary focus of the police “from the security of the state to that of the individual.” While there are many lessons to be drawn from the IPTF and EUPM experiences in Bosnia, several stand out. The ﬁrst, clearly, is that mandates matter, and that compromises made to secure a peace agreement may ultimately come back to haunt those charged with peace implementation. While the IPTF mandate was essentially rewritten over the course of its mission, the undeniable fact is that the UN stumbled badly through the ﬁrst crucial years of the Dayton peace process, and its impotence contributed signiﬁcantly to the lack of progress on the peace implementation front in these early years. The UN’s weak mandate was an important factor in the emergence of a serious security gap in post-Dayton Bosnia. This gap has had its most profound impacts in the area of public security, where the mix of military peacekeeping and local and international policing has proven insufﬁcient to restore the rule of law and a climate of stability and security. As the evolution of the IPTF mandate clearly shows, however, one of the core lessons from the Bosnia experience is that even an unarmed and nonexecutive international police force, equipped not only with the mandate and mechanisms to closely monitor local police activities but also with the authority to penalize police misconduct, can make a real difference in terms of closing the security gap. Had the IPTF possessed in 1996 the powers it wielded in 2002, Bosnia’s post-Dayton trajectory might have been very different. As Michael Dziedzic has noted, the enforcement gap that typically exists in post-conﬂict situations is often exacerbated by a deployment gap, in which military peacekeepers are typically on the ground far in advance of a coherent international police presence.43 Particularly in the aftermath of a fragile peace such as that produced at Dayton, the ability to get appropriately staffed missions with strong mandates in place as early as possible is crucial. Delays in deployment meant that the IPTF had little impact during the ﬁrst few critical months of the peace implementation process. NATO’s ability to deliver on this front, in contrast, was instrumental in the early and successful implementation of the peace accord’s military aspects, even if the NATO example also highlights important differences between military and civilian institutions on questions of mobilization. While much has been said about the need to establish a roster of mission-ready international police personnel who can be deployed on short notice, serious deﬁciencies still exist within the international system on this front.44 185

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Bosnia’s police reform experience, and the calls for a more robust international police presence in the immediate aftermath of a peace agreement, also underscore the importance of getting the right people on the ground. Throughout its tenure, the IPTF’s credibility has been tarnished by police monitors who could neither drive nor speak English, by others who have become involved in human trafﬁcking and prostitution, and by still others who saw their mission as little more than a well-paid vacation. At the same time, allegations have long circulated that certain IPTF monitors were co-opted by local police authorities through “gifts” of apartments or even women, while many others demonstrated that their professional solidarity with their local police counterparts outweighed their professional responsibilities towards vulnerable local populations. Clearly, the uneven quality of personnel in international policing missions – and the accountability of these personnel for their actions – is a major issue, since the scandals and allegations of incompetence that surrounded the IPTF since its inception undermined the mission’s effectiveness. It is now well recognized that the uneven quality of international police monitors is directly related to the shortage of qualiﬁed police ofﬁcers available for international missions. The supply of civilian police monitors is drawn almost exclusively either from the pool of ofﬁcers budgeted to serve the policing needs of their home countries or from the ranks of retired police. This reality has produced signiﬁcant shortfalls in the availability of policing personnel to staff international missions, and forced the UN to accept monitors who may be less than ideal candidates for the job. While some progress has been made within the UN system towards addressing this issue, and the European Union has initiated a Civilian Police Initiative with the same goal, recruitment issues and the availability of qualiﬁed staff remain a serious impediment to the effectiveness of international police missions.45 Finally, nearly a decade of police reform experience in Bosnia also underlines the undeniable reality that police reform is an inherently political process. In post-war environments such as Bosnia, where the underlying issues behind the conﬂict are far from resolved and where the police were not only belligerents during the conﬂict but key players in the political struggles that have marked its aftermath, any expectation of a smooth transition to impartial, professional policing lies more in the realm of fantasy than reality. As the United Nations and the broader international community have learned over the course of the Dayton process, the technical aspects of police reform – such as training and equipment provision – are both the least problematic and the least effective aspects of the reform process. What has been lacking in Bosnia, largely because of the unresolved nature of the conﬂict, is the domestic political will to change what police do, and whom they serve. And while the last few years have seen the international community in Bosnia much more engaged in the effort to tackle the politics of policing, the combination of carrots and sticks available to international actors is only very gradually changing the underlying political dynamics at work in Bosnia. The recent struggle to generate even a grudging consensus 186

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on the EU’s three criteria for police reform is only the latest manifestation of this broader transformation, which goes far beyond policing and touches on the very nature of political power in post-Dayton Bosnia. Ultimately, the police are a reﬂection of the society, and the political environment, in which they are embedded. As one of the key interfaces between state and citizen in any society, police are autonomous from neither. In the case of Bosnia, as in other divided post-conﬂict states, this suggests that international actors should approach police reform with a healthy sense that such endeavours will necessarily be long-term, incremental, and dependent on broader political trends. At the same time, however, the Bosnian experience also shows that policing, public security, and post-conﬂict peacebuilding are closely linked, and that the international community ignores these linkages at its peril. Indeed, the very fact that post-conﬂict police reform is not only complex and politically charged but also essential to the long-term sustainability of any peace process suggests that this issue rightfully deserves greater attention among both theorists and practitioners.

Notes Research for this paper was made possible through the ﬁnancial support of both the Canadian Consortium on Human Security (CCHS) and the human security program of Foreign Affairs Canada. The views presented here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the CCHS or its afﬁliated institutions. 1 UN Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, “UN Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH): The end of a mandate,” Sarajevo: UN Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 31 December 2002. Online. Available HTTP: <www.unmibh.org/press/view. asp?PressID=72> (accessed September 2003). 2 R. Holbrooke, To End a War, New York: Modern Library, 1999, pp. 221, 51. 3 International Crisis Group, Policing the Police in Bosnia: A Further Reform Agenda, Sarajevo/Brussels: International Crisis Group [Bosnia], 10 May 2002, p. 6. Online. Available at: http://www.icg.org//library/documents/report_archive/A400644_ 10052002.pdf (accessed 1 October 2004). 4 Cited in W. Kole and A. Cerkez-Robinson, “U.N. police accused of involvement in prostitution in Bosnia,” Associated Press, 28 June 2001. Online. Available at: (accessed 26 October 2004). 5 L. Sell, “The Serb Flight from Sarajevo: Dayton’s First Failure,” East European Politics and Societies, 14: 1, 2000, p. 198. 6 UN Development Program, Security Sector Reform: Lessons Learned from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, New York: UN Development Program, August 2001, p. 7. 7 International Crisis Group, Is Dayton Failing? Bosnia Four Years after the Peace Agreement, Sarajevo/Brussels: International Crisis Group [Bosnia], October 1999, p. 43. Online. Available at: (accessed 1 October 2004). 8 Under the terms of the Dayton Accords, Bosnia is divided into two largely autonomous entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska. The Federation is further divided into ten cantons, each with its own police service, while the strategic town of Brcko became an autonomous district as of 1999. 9 The work of the Police Restructuring Commission, which was established in 2004 to rationalize the structure of policing in Bosnia, is discussed below. 187

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10 D. Bayley, Democratizing the Police Abroad: What to Do and How to Do It, Washington: US Department of Justice, 2001, pp. 35, 38. Online. Available at: (accessed 1 October 2004). 11 At the end of 1999, the UN was also given responsibility for helping Bosnia establish a State Border Service (SBS). While considered to be one of the more successful international security initiatives in post-Dayton Bosnia, space considerations preclude a more detailed discussion of the SBS here. 12 Cited in C. Cordone, “Police Reform and Human Rights Investigations: The Experience of the UN Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” in T. T. Holm and E. B. Eide (eds), Peacebuilding and Police Reform, London: Frank Cass, 2000, p. 192. 13 United Nations, Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, New York: United Nations, November 2001. Online. Available at: (accessed 26 October 2004); United Nations, Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, New York: United Nations, June 2002. Online. Available at: (accessed 26 October 2004). 14 Cited in International Crisis Group, Policing the Police in Bosnia, p. 53. 15 International Crisis Group, Policing the Police in Bosnia, p. 2; see also United Nations, Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, New York: United Nations, December 2002. Online: Available at: (accessed 27 January 2005). 16 Conﬁdential author interview with former IPTF ofﬁcer, 16 October 2003, Toronto (telephone interview). 17 International Crisis Group, Policing the Police in Bosnia, p. 54. 18 International Crisis Group, Policing the Police in Bosnia, p. 41. 19 International Crisis Group, Policing the Police in Bosnia, p. 41. 20 UN Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Summary of UNMIBH Human Rights Ofﬁce Activities, Sarajevo: UN Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, December 2002, p. 3. 21 Return ﬁgures are available from the Ofﬁce of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, at http://www.unhcr.ba/return/index.htm (accessed 1 October 2004). 22 UN High Commissioner for Refugees, BiH Return Security Update, Sarajevo: UN High Commissioner for Refugees, January 2004. 23 C. Soloway, “Return to Foca,” special investigative report, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, October 2001. Online. Available at: (accessed 1 October 2004). Minority-related “incidents,” tracked by the IPTF, did in fact increase through 2002, but this likely reﬂects the increase in return activity rather than a deterioration of the overall security environment. However, violence directed against minority returnees, particularly in Republika Srpska, remains a serious concern. 24 Conﬁdential author interviews with ﬁeld staff from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, October–November 2003. 25 M. Alfaro, Return Monitoring Study: Minority Returnees to Republika Srpska – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo: UN High Commissioner for Refugees [Bosnia], 2000, p. 7. Online. Available at: (accessed 1 October 2004). 26 UN Development Program, Early Warning System Bosnia 2002 Annual Report, Sarajevo: UN Development Program [Bosnia], 2002, p. 55. Online. Available at: (accessed 1 October 2004). Somewhat curiously, minority communities in Muslim-majority areas were more satisﬁed with police responses than respondents from the majority community. 188

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27 International Crisis Group, Policing the Police in Bosnia, pp. 1, 34. 28 International Crisis Group, The Continuing Challenge of Refugee Return in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo/Brussels: International Crisis Group [Bosnia], 13 December 2002, p. 18. Online. Available at: (accessed 1 October 2004). 29 Details of both cases can be found in International Crisis Group, The Continuing Challenge of Refugee Return. 30 Ofﬁce of the High Representative, “Remarks by Principal Deputy HR Donald Hays at the CPIC Press Conference,” Sarajevo: Ofﬁce of the High Representative, 5 September 2002. Online. Available at: (accessed 1 October 2004). 31 See T. Donais, “The Political Economy of Stalemate: Organized Crime, Corruption, and Economic Deformation in Post-Dayton Bosnia,” Conﬂict, Security and Development, 3: 3, 2003, pp. 359–382; on Bosnia’s booming drug trade see B. Becirbasic, “Zanimanje: diler (Occupation: Dealer),” in Dani, 3 September 2004. 32 US Institute of Peace, American Civilian Police in UN Peace Operations: Lessons Learned and Ideas for the Future, New York: US Institute of Peace, July 2001. Online: Available at: (accessed 1 October 2004). 33 On this issue, see Human Rights Watch, Hopes Betrayed: Trafﬁcking of Women and Girls to Post-Conﬂict Bosnia and Herzegovina for Forced Prostitution, New York: Human Rights Watch, November 2002. Online. Available at: (accessed 1 October 2004). 34 H. Grifﬁths and N. Jelacic, “Investigation: Will Europe Take on Bosnia’s Maﬁa?” Institute for War and Peace Reporting, 2 December 2004. Online. Available at: (accessed 27 January 2005). 35 UN Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina, “Statement by SRSG Jacques Paul Klein to the United Nations Security Council,” Sarajevo: UN Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina, December 2002. Online: Available at: (accessed October 2003). 36 International Crisis Group, Policing the Police in Bosnia, pp. 34–37. 37 UN Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina, “Statement by SRSG Jacques Paul Klein to the United Nations Security Council,” Sarajevo: UN Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina, October 2002. Online. Available at: www.unmibh.org/stories/view.asp? StoryID=219> (accessed October 2003). 38 For an early assessment of the EUPM, see K. M. Osland, “The EU Police Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” International Peacekeeping, 11: 3, Autumn 2004, pp. 544–560; a later, and more critical, assessment can be found in International Crisis Group, Bosnia’s Stalled Police Reform: No Progress, No EU, Sarajevo/Brussels: International Crisis Group [Bosnia], 6 September 2005, pp. 12–14. Online. Available at: (accessed 18 November 2005). 39 Police Restructuring Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Final Report on the Work of the Police Restructuring Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo: Ofﬁce of the High Representative, December 2004, pp. 4–5. Online. Available at: (accessed April 2005). 40 Police Restructuring Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Final Report, pp. 4–5. 41 Ofﬁce of the High Representative, “Statement: OHR welcomes RSNA vote on police reform,” Sarajevo: Ofﬁce of the High Representative, 6 October 2005. Online. Available at: (accessed 18 November 2005). 189

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42 UN Development Program, Security Sector Reform, p. 7. 43 M. Dziedzic, “Introduction,” in R. Oakley, M. Dziedzic, and E. Goldberg (eds), Policing the New World Disorder: Peace Operations and Public Security, Washington: National Defense University Press, 1998, pp. 8–10. 44 While some experts have advocated the establishment of a standing UN “blue force” containing policing, judicial, and corrections elements and capable of rapid deployment, others have argued that the only way to close the deployment gap is through expanding the roles of military peacekeepers. See the discussion in International Peace Academy, Managing Security Challenges in Post-Conﬂict Peacebuilding, New York: International Peace Academy, June 2001. Online. Available at: (accessed 26 October 2004). 45 A. Hansen, From Congo to Kosovo: Civilian Police in Peace Operations (Adelphi Paper 343), London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2002, pp. 48–50.

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10 CROSSING BOUNDARIES State Border Services and the multidimensional nature of security Alice Hills

Categorizing Bosnian security is difﬁcult. Bosnia’s recent history is shaped by controversies concerning the role of security in state formation, yet it is not clear whether Bosnian security is more than the sum of international and domestic security concerns. We do not know how the various horizontal and vertical relationships interact, or what the referent object of Bosnian security might be. Not only is security a contested concept, but also bordering the Bosnian state is controversial. For Bosnia is at once a former republic of Tito’s Yugoslavia with its own territorially deﬁned reality, a nascent state establishing international borders in the face of regional cynicism, and an internationally managed composite state. It is a protectorate, and a de facto partitioned state riven by internal divisions and legacy issues that threaten to undermine the goals and objectives of the Dayton agreement. As a result, describing Bosnia’s security in terms based on Westphalian levels of analysis often seems contrived. The broad indicators of Bosnia’s spatial dimensions further complicate easy categorization. The EU regards Bosnia as a speciﬁc and sanctioned security space, with ﬁfty registered entry points. It describes the country as part of southeast Europe, or as a gateway to Europe, with all that this entails in terms of mental maps, but Bosnia is also an impoverished and de-industrialized country with bad roads, mountainous terrain, and established smuggling routes that pay no attention to formal state borders: Bosnia’s 1,600 kilometers of green and blue border may be crossed at almost any point. The only easily controllable open country is in the north (the Dinaric Alps run from the north-west to the southeast), and there are more than 400 known illegal crossing points. Rivers separate more than 40 percent of Bosnia from Croatia and Serbia, but the State Border Service (SBS) has only ﬁve boats to patrol its 267-kilometer stretch of the River Sava. Inevitably, transit routes for illegal migration and trafﬁcking criss-cross Bosnia’s formal borders. Illegal immigration into Bosnia is most problematic in the south-east of the country, while the north-west and west is the exit point for 191

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migrants leaving Bosnia for Croatia. Most organized crime enters Bosnia from the south-east and north-east of the country, leaving it from the north-west. Such activities are rarely a security issue for Bosnians. Major urban centres may have expensive cars, hotels and retail outlets, but elsewhere subsistence agriculture and harsh living conditions ensure that many Bosnians facilitate, or are directly involved in the smuggling that international legislation criminalized only recently. Border insecurity is, however, a major issue for the international community, and EU member states regard the illegal migration and trafﬁcking common in Bosnia’s border regions to be one of the main security challenges confronting the country. Consequently, security in (and of) Bosnia becomes opaque at the same time as the meaning of insecurity gains clarity. The disparity between international and Bosnian interpretations of security suggests that separating the security of Bosnia from security in Bosnia is of limited value, for both must be integrated into a coherent whole if “Bosnian security” is to be a meaningful term. Further, although Bosnia’s elite must accommodate international orthodoxy regarding the drivers of insecurity, Bosnia’s thriving shadow economy suggests that deﬁning Bosnian security in internationally acceptable terms alone is likely to prove as ﬂawed as the Dayton agreement itself. In reality, Bosnian security is the equivalent of a multi-dimensional space. It is similar to a game of chess involving horizontal and vertical relationships operating at a number of levels. It is about the interplay of international and domestic politics in a juridical and/or empirical security space, and it is about a political experiment intended to impose a speciﬁc type of state authority. But also it concerns the activities of sectoral agents pursuing a range of organizational and personal goals in a speciﬁc functional space. Analysing, containing and regulating the Bosnian security space cannot, therefore, be a straightforward matter. Consequently, Bosnian security is best understood as a tangle of competing assumptions, functional necessities, and social realities, operating within a security space. This hypothesis is explored here by reference to Bosnia’s State Border Service. SBS cannot offer a complete answer to the question of Bosnian security, but it provides a focused perspective on a signiﬁcant aspect of Bosnian state’s empirical and metaphorical boundaries. More importantly, SBS’s record suggests that security is a hybrid and unstable concept covering the security of Bosnia and security in Bosnia. The chapter is organized in four sections. The nature of Bosnia’s security space as it relates to border management is introduced. Second, the development of SBS from 2000 until 2005 is outlined as a means to identify the imperatives and tensions underpinning Bosnian security. Third, the means by which SBS and other inﬂuential actors typically manage the security space is analysed. Fourth, the chapter concludes that while points of interface between the various aspects of Bosnia’s security are identiﬁable, there is as yet no coherent or comprehensive deﬁnition of Bosnian security; Bosnian security is a matter of overlap and friction between multiple perspectives and interests. 192

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Security spaces Bosnia is a fragile state built on compromise in an unstable region with a violent past. From an international perspective, the most signiﬁcant characteristics of Bosnia’s current (in)security are the institutionalization of corruption, economic under-development, social exclusion, and collusion between government ofﬁcials, members of the ruling nationalist parties, security agencies, and organized crime. Border-related insecurity is, from this viewpoint, of special note because the illegal migrants and drugs trafﬁcked across Bosnia’s borders are intended for member states of the European Union (EU), thereby subverting EU border regulations. At the same time, the illegal small arms, cigarettes, fuel, alcohol and stolen vehicles passing through Bosnia for elsewhere in the region are seen as depriving the Bosnian government of revenue, increasing the potential for conﬂict, and making a mockery of the statist notions underpinning internationally sanctioned security spaces. There is a degree of international unanimity regarding the drivers of insecurity in Bosnia, with legacy issues dominating most assessments. Today’s regional criminal networks, for example, developed as a result of the region’s need to circumvent international sanctions on the import of weapons and oil during the wars of the 1990s, but were easily adapted to trafﬁcking women, drugs and cigarettes after Dayton; an estimated 90 percent of the Afghan heroin in Europe is distributed through such networks.1 Also, social realities have become securitized, even though social exclusion and smuggling in rural areas is sometimes the result of decades of governmental neglect, and population displacement during the wars. The picture is rather different from a Bosnian perspective. Bosnia’s economy is stagnant, the average monthly wage is about B250, and more than 20 percent of the working age-population is unemployed. Bosnia is, however, only a few hours drive from the EU, and it lies across traditional smuggling routes. The result is inevitable: Bosnia’s informal economy is thriving, and the cross-border trafﬁcking of illegal migrants and women is big business. Trafﬁckers are wellconnected and efﬁciently organized, while the local police and border guards are easily persuaded to look the other way – corruption is a survival mechanism to supplement inadequate income, as well as the exploitation of public ofﬁce for private gain. Further, the most lucrative forms of corruption, like economic power itself, remain concentrated in the hands of what Donais calls Bosnia’s “three ethnically divided and geographically separated cartels”: the nationalist political parties, organized criminal elements, and remnants of the socialist-era nomenklatura.2 The consequences for functional security – and the institutions managing it – are predictable. None of the various strands in Bosnian security is easily disentangled, and it is impossible to identify precisely where criminal activities may be separated from the funding of the nationalist or ethnic survival strategies that are legitimate in the eyes of Bosnians. For example, millions of dollars of international aid 193

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were sent to Bosnia to ﬁnance reconstruction in the mid-1990s, only to be channelled into the bank accounts of Bosnia’s political and security elite. In 1997, it was reported that Muslim authorities had diverted as much as $30 million of the World Bank’s $150 millions-worth of transitional assistance credits to ﬁnance their own ethnic structures.3 In reality, crime and corruption are interwoven because criminal organizations have political protection; many criminals enjoy excellent working relationships with politicians, businessmen, and security ofﬁcials. One reason why trafﬁcking, for instance, is big business is because successful trafﬁckers are well connected and are rarely prosecuted. Collusion is difﬁcult to prove, but two high-proﬁle criminal cases illustrate the intricacy of the resultant security environment. One year after Dayton, Nedzad Ugljen, who was second-incommand of Bosnia’s secret intelligence services in Sarajevo (the Agency for Investigation and Documentation, AID) and liaison ofﬁcer with the CIA, was killed in a gangland-style execution. But it was never clear whether Ugljen was killed by war criminals, gangsters, gun-runners, the Bosnian government, the Iranian government (which was suspected of using Bosnia as a means to spread Islamic radicalism in Europe), or, indeed, by his own agency.4 The same dynamics were evident in the assassination of the deputy minister of the Federal police department, Jozo Leutar, in March 1999. Senior ofﬁcials in the Federation interior ministry reportedly obstructed the investigation, though the main suspect, Ivan Andabaka, a former Croatian general, was later arrested on drug trafﬁcking charges.5 Other suspects were charged with terrorism offences. The extent to which terrorism, rather than ordinary criminality shapes the security space is more debatable. As early as March 2000, for example, the UN Mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina (UNMIBH) established a Ministerial Consultative Meeting on Police Matters (MCMPM) that required the director of SBS, together with the ministries of the interior of the Federation and the Republika Srpska to meet monthly to discuss policing issues that probably included terrorism. In August that year, MCMPM signed a cooperative law enforcement arrangement that established a Joint Entity Task Force speciﬁcally charged to operate against international terrorism, as well as uncontrolled migration and organized crime. Bosnia has also had an anti-terrorist committee chaired by the deputy minister of foreign affairs since at least 2002. On the other hand, the terrorist threat is easy to manipulate; it is a useful lever for fulﬁlling domestic political objectives, or for claiming additional resources, so the signiﬁcance of such arrangements is not always easy to assess. In late 2001, for example, SBS sought increased funding on the basis of its enhanced role in combating terrorism, yet terrorism does not appear to play a signiﬁcant role in its operational strategy, and SBS ofﬁcials do not prioritize anti-terror measures. Even so, terrorism ﬁgures largely in the political calculations of most Bosnian ofﬁcials, not least because it feeds off – and operationalizes – Bosnian obstructionism. Bosnia undoubtedly hosts terrorists and their sympathizers, as Kohlmann 194

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notes in his contribution on the North African sleeper network, but the threat of terrorism tends to be used by Bosnian ofﬁcials as a smokescreen. After the Madrid train bombings of March 2004, RS police director Dragomir Andan claimed there was a link between the Madrid bombers and Bosnia, but this proved to be a fabrication designed to distract international attention from Bosnia’s stalled police reform. A Bosnian passport was found at one of the bombsites, but it belonged to a temporary roommate of one of the bombers. Similarly, in October 2005, Dragan Lukac, assistant director for criminal investigation at SIPA, argued that terrorism had not penetrated Bosnia. The fact that two suspected terrorists were arrested within days, and subsequent arrests in Denmark were explicitly linked to events in Bosnia, suggests that the threat was genuine but that the arrests were prompted by political calculations intended to curry favour with the Bush administration. The situation was made still more confused by a statement several weeks later from Kevin Carty, the Irish policeman in charge of the EU’s mission overseeing police reforms, describing Bosnia’s security environment as “benign.”6 In practice, terrorism is only one of the variables shaping Bosnian security. Terrorism cannot be the deﬁning factor in Bosnian security when, as Maj. Gen. Leakey, the British ofﬁcer in command of Eufor (the EU’s 7,000-strong military force in Bosnia), noted in November 2005, approximately 30–40 percent of the police are unreliable, with all that this implies for reliable law enforcement, let alone counter-terrorism.7 The existence of ﬁfteen separate – and uncooperative – police forces in a country of 3.8 million exacerbates the problem (separate forces are likely to exist for several years despite the October 2005 agreement on police reform).8 As a result, working deﬁnitions of Bosnian security must prioritize instead “the saturation of political structures with enthnocentric provisions, the strength of ethnically-based patronage, the weakness of central authority and the illogic of internal borders [that make Bosnia] both ungovernable and economically unsustainable.”9 Bosnia is not unique in this respect. Its division into state, entity, cantonal (in the Federation) and municipal units is more complicated than that of its neighbours, but it shares many insecurities with them. Nonetheless, Bosnia is distinctive in one important respect: uncertain borders head the security agenda across much of the Balkans, but in Bosnia border revision is not an issue. Bosnia’s leaders have in the past warned that independence for Kosovo could lead to Bosnian Serbs reopening the debate about leaving Bosnia for Serbia, but the basic external boundaries of Bosnia are not in doubt. Neither is the existence of a state-level border service. In other words, SBS offers a relatively uncontroversial illustration of the assumptions, functional necessities, and social realities driving the international and domestic actors competing for the control of a signiﬁcant aspect of Bosnia’s security space.

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State Border Service Bosnia’s State Border Service (Drzˇavna Granicˇna Sluzˇba, or DGS) was – and is – a political experiment designed to promote Bosnia’s territorial integrity, enhance the authority and revenue of the Bosnian state, manage the boundaries of its political community, and offset the power of Bosnia’s various police forces. It was also the result of international frustration with the slow pace of change in the years immediately after Dayton. As a single, multi-ethnic police, SBS’s objectives and organization are based on EU-style norms, structures, and objectives. The best indication of international orthodoxy at the time of SBS’s creation in 2000 is to be found in the words of the then director of the International Centre for Migration Policy and Research: Modern and well functioning border control services are a prerequisite for attaining the overriding goals of the Stability Pact in terms of security, not only within each country concerned but also region-wise. Without modernized, well equipped and non-corruptive border services, no sustained and successful co-operative ventures in the combat of organized crime and illegal migration, with all its components: car thefts, weapons smuggling, trafﬁcking in drugs and in people, and so forth [can succeed]. Well-trained border guards, incorporated into the police sector and no longer belonging to the military, are also a prerequisite.10 This statement reﬂects the international consensus that border security is a signiﬁcant part of Bosnia’s broader security space. It suggests too that a number of cross-cutting issues are identiﬁable, ranging from institutional capacity building, to the construction of appropriate and adequate crossing points so as to shorten queuing times and thereby lessen the environmental impact of border security on Bosnia’s road infrastructure. Whatever the case, border management has a relatively high proﬁle in Bosnian security. The initial impetus behind the creation of the SBS is difﬁcult to identify, but it seemingly owed much to the personal convictions and determination of the then American Special Representative of the United Nations’ Secretary General, Jacques Klein (Klein held this post from 1999 until 2003). Klein, like his colleagues, was convinced that Bosnia, as a new country with internationally recognised but porous borders, required a police that could control its borders, thereby preserving its sovereignty, territorial integrity, political independence and “international personality.”11 The requirement for a state border police was ﬁrst raised at the December 1997 Peace Implementation Council in Bonn, and preliminary legislation was drafted by the Ofﬁce of the High Representative, the International Police Task Force (IPTF) and Bosnian authorities in the months that followed. In late 1999, 196

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UNMIBH assumed responsibility for deploying SBS after Bosnia’s State Parliament repeatedly failed to promulgate the Law on the State Border Service. This was to some extent predictable because the development of such a central institution would be at the expense of Bosnia’s other security layers. Also, SBS’s proposed structure challenged existing divisions of power in that the area of an SBS unit did not have to correspond with the administrative divisions common in the entities. In the event, January 2001 saw the High Representative (Wolfgang Petritsch) impose a border service directorate designed to force through the necessary legislation. The State Parliament ﬁnally ratiﬁed this in the summer of 2001. Despite such obstacles, SBS’s deployment took place on time. Three phases are identiﬁable.12 The priority in the ﬁrst phase was to establish and staff a headquarters in Lukavica, to be followed by the inauguration of the SBS at Sarajevo airport, and the takeover of three land crossings from the entity police, the Federation cantonal interior ministries, and the Republika Srpska Interior Ministry. An SBS contingent was established in Lukavica in mid-2000, and the ﬁrst four Border Service Units (BSU) of an eventual twenty-one were sent to Sarajevo airport and to three sectors of the border. A second development phase then began with the inauguration of more SBS units, and the opening of a dedicated training centre in May 2001, by which time SBS controlled 62 percent of the border. By the end of 2001 this had increased to 75 percent, and by 2003 it was 98 percent. In January 2002 staff levels were 1,469, divided between a headquarters and ﬁfteen units. By late 2002 there were 2,442 ofﬁcers, and 2003 saw a ﬁnal strength of 2,700; there were also 250 cadet graduates of the training centre. (This later fell to 2,000, but in 2005 was increased to 2,500.) Approximately 10 percent of SBS perform administrative duties, and each sector has an inner reserve of 10 percent. By early 2003 the total budget was $28.3 million, of which 61 percent was for salaries, 15 percent for allowances, 11 percent for operating costs, and 13 percent for capital budget. Salaries ranged from B648 per month for the director and his deputies, to approximately B240 for the most complex jobs performed by ofﬁcers with low educational standards. Funding sources included a mix of domestic agencies, UNMIBH, EU, and the Netherlands. SBS was an international experiment in building a multi-ethnic institution, hence its distinctive management model. A Border Service Directorate (BSD) sits at its organisational apex, with the Chief of the Border Service Department reporting directly to the commissioner of the IPTF or his equivalent. Meanwhile the SBS Directorate consists of three directors, one from each ethnicity, who are appointed for a period of four years, with the executive directorship rotating between the three every eight months (the ﬁrst appointments were made in 2000). The director and his two deputies report to the Council of Ministers (led by the president on political issues), and work closely with the chief of the service. They also supervise SBS’s internal control unit, which deals with 197

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disciplinary problems. Other units (particularly those formed for established parts of the border zone) were created as distinct spatial internal organizational elements. Their jurisdiction covered the tasks of border surveillance, control of state border crossings, and the detection and prevention of criminal activities directed against border security or tasks done by SBS. Developments were in accordance with EU procedures and standards, as the UNMIBH’s glossy bulletin, Borderline, repeatedly emphasized. International commitment to SBS’s success as a gatekeeper for Bosnian security is evident in many ways. The UNMIBH’s Border Service Department, for instance, controlled the Service’s early development and management. It ensured SBS ﬁtted into the broader Bosnian security sector, with UNMIBH’s senior civilian coordinator acting as advisor to the SBS Directorate, while coordinating UNMIBH involvement with state institutions, diplomatic missions, donors, SFOR, OHR and other international agencies. This helped guarantee that the drafting and implementing of border legislation, and SBS’s legal foundations developed as intended. It also ensured that SBS’s operational model – “integrated border management” – is based on EU standards, and that its equipment and training reﬂects international standards and approaches.13 The EU used various monitoring, mentoring and inspection activities to ensure sustainable EU-style border policing took root. These included guidance from the European Union Police Mission (EUPM), which succeeded the UN’s International Police Task Force (ITPF), and ﬁnancial support from the Community Assistance for Reconstruction, Development and Stabilization (CARDS) program; CARDS being the cornerstone of the EU’s policy in the region. Technical support was provided by means such as the UK-led IMMPACT project. In its ﬁrst few months, IMMPACT (which was launched in late 2001) trained ofﬁcers in detecting forgery, interview skills, and proﬁling; by 2002, 1,500 had been trained. Many other countries, including Austria, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, the UK and the U.S., gave bilateral ﬁnancial assistance, donations, and training programs. SBS’s formal organization and objectives reﬂect the philosophy of such donors, for whom state-level security is a given, and Schengen-style border management is a normative priority, a legitimizing principle, and an organizing device.14 More importantly, technical assistance is seen as a tool to ensure that Bosnia has the working security structures and capacity needed to function as a country, and to act as an external line of defence for the EU. In fact, SBS was totally reliant on such support, for it inherited little in the way of resources, so extensive equipment and training programs were needed. Pre-war Bosnia did not have an international border or border force, and the new guards had no experience of controlling international borders, identifying forged documents, or dealing with illegal immigration. Bosnia did not even have national heroes or historical events that could be used to promote a border service. SBS’s record emphasizes that both SBS and Bosnian security are atypical as 198

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far as the Balkans are concerned: both are the result of sustained international response to context-speciﬁc regional issues. SBS remains heavily dependent on substantial foreign assistance and, for the moment at least, its existence is reliant on Bosnia’s role as a European protectorate. Indeed, while the role played by Special Representative Klein in SBS’s creation was signiﬁcant, the power wielded by the High Representative (who oversees the affairs of state) is extraordinary. After his appointment in May 2002, Paddy Ashdown aggressively pursued policies aimed at implementing the economic, legal, and governance reforms international observers consider necessary for meaningful Bosnian security, all of which impacted on SBS.15

Managing security Organizations such as SBS do not supervise security as a discrete activity. They manage a security space that incorporates political and functional issues originating in, or having implications for, the organization or its (senior) ofﬁcers. Comparable considerations apply to the means by which SBS is itself managed. It is impossible to disentangle cause and effect, but the most important imperatives are invariably political. Consequently, just as SBS’s creation resulted from its international interlocutor’s political commitment to the security of Bosnia, and frustration with the nature of its sub-state security, so SBS’s management of Bosnia’s security space is an inherently political activity. Political origins That Bosnia’s borders must be managed was never questioned in Washington or Brussels, but Bosnian opposition to uniﬁed state-level policing meant that no national policing strategies could be developed before late 2005. As a multiethnic police, SBS was designed to make a political point in a divided country. It offered a politically appropriate indicator of Bosnia’s wish for a stabilization and association agreement with the EU, and an opportunity for the Bosnian state to amend its poor record of delivering public functions and services. SBS also offered the EU and NATO a ﬁlter against the regional insecurity seen to threaten EU member states, and a means to enhance regional stability. For such reasons, regional cooperation between Bosnia and its neighbours is one of the main elements of the Stabilization and Association Process (SAp), which aims to consolidate the region’s relations with the EU and “open up a real perspective of adhesion” based on the EU’s model of integration and cooperation.16 Regional cooperation has been a major theme in EU pronouncements from SBS’s earliest days, and the importance attached to cooperation is evident from the B197 million allocated to it under the CARDS program for 2002–2004; integrated border management – the preferred vehicle for achieving it – is accordingly one of the seven main areas of EU intervention. Seen from this perspective, border security is a fundamental factor shaping the regional security 199

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space: “effective border management will enable people from the Western Balkans to live in a space of security and freedom,” thereby facilitating trade and travel, which are seen as key prerequisites for economic growth and poverty reduction and the development of tolerant multicultural societies.17 SBS maneuvers Political imperatives shape SBS’s management of border security too. Just as Bosnia’s inter-linked problems require a comprehensive solution, so SBS cannot operate in isolation, but must negotiate with a range of agencies. At the domestic level SBS is answerable to a council of ministers, rather than a central ministry, but it must also accommodate the demands of Bosnia’s political and security elites, as well as those of the High Representative and the professional advisers attached to internationally funded missions. It must coordinate its activities (and exchange information) with the ministries of internal affairs in the Federation and the Republika Srpska, Brcˇko district police, customs, the ministry for human rights and refugees, the ministry of foreign trade and economic relations, and various legislative bodies. Immigration issues, for example, require it to work with the ministry for human rights and refugees, the ministry of internal affairs, UNHCR (asylum), and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on voluntary return to country of origin. At the regional level, SBS must deal with its neighbors (especially Croatia), various working groups, the Southeast European Co-operative Initiative Regional Centre for Combating Transborder Crime (SECI Centre), EUROPOL, and the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol). More importantly, SBS must deal with the agencies or structures whose interests threatens, or who might exploit it – new security agencies such as SBS are always vulnerable to sabotage, manipulation, or cooption. Various attempts were made to use entity votes and ethnic control of key areas to sabotage or subvert SBS during the preliminary discussions of 1999, while in 2000, the Bosniak nationalist Party of Democratic Action (SDA) argued that electoral losses did not matter provided it retained control of key positions in SBS and the intelligence services.18 The return of nationalist parties to power in the general elections of July 2002 showed an increasing awareness of the importance of borders on the part of factional interests. Since then control of SBS has become an attractive prize for Bosnia’s politicians, as is evident from their failure to agree on the appointment of a director and senior managers to SBS in the summer of 2005. A EUPM press release noted that this was “primarily caused by blatant political interference in the appointment process.”19 SBS must protect its authority and operations against challenges from agencies such as the new State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA), the various police forces, and the ethnic groups’ militaries and intelligence agencies. SIPA in particular could yet encroach on SBS’s remit, for it is able to investigate organized crime (and war crimes and terrorism) throughout Bosnia, whereas the 200

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entity police forces were allowed to operate only within their respective entity borders.20 The controversy surrounding the replacement of SBS director Slavisˇa Vukovic by Relja Kovac, commander of SIPA’s VIP protection unit, in February 2004 is evidence of the seriousness of the threat.21 More generally, relations between SBS and Bosnia’s various police remain acrimonious, with police and entity customs ofﬁcers resenting guards’ proﬁle and resources; guards’ wages are several times higher than those of their police equivalents. It is impossible to identify the precise means by which SBS manages such threats, though the career experience of some senior ofﬁcers suggests they are well placed to respond. Thus at the time of his initial appointment, Vukovic, one of SBS’s original directors, had some ten years’ experience in the security sector, while Mile Juric, chief of SBS, had sixteen (both ﬁgures are typical of the region). Admittedly Vukovic’s experience did not ensure his own survival as director, but his background must have helped SBS obstruct developments that were not to its advantage. For example, SBS has adopted several strategic documents authored by international groups, but has then failed to implement them. This is unsurprising because the notion that SBS exists to enforce Bosnian law or international standards rather than the wishes of the government of the day means little; ideas such as personal accountability are absent from the existing police culture. SBS has probably managed to reduce some challenges to its authority or operations by using international support. The monitoring of appointments, ﬁnancing and training by international ofﬁcers and ofﬁcials no doubt helped it avoid compromising its formal functions and legal framework in its ﬁrst years. It was able to see off NATO, for example, when NATO attempted to pressurize Bosnia into using demobilized troops for border police, by calling on ITPF to support it in rejecting the scheme. SBS argued that military and police should cooperate where necessary but that responsibility should be strictly demarcated, for the military lack the quality and skills that police bring to the job; in other words, border security is a civilian matter. Since then all military connotations or associations have been sharply rejected, with most senior ofﬁcers convinced that the presence of military units, let alone military habits, are destabilizing and must be dismantled as rapidly as possible. SBS’s senior ofﬁcers must be astute politicians as much as skilled policemen. The clarity with which SBS deﬁnes its remit, and the focused nature of its functional response, probably enhances its management of the broader security space. First, SBS shares a common functional language with guards in EU states, which provides a degree of peer support. Indeed, the formal assumptions and principles underpinning SBS’s activities are common to most European forces: SBS is a specialist independent police, rather than a paramilitary organization, and its formal working practices derive from its status as an autonomous border security force, rather than as part of a national police force or ministry of the interior. Its duties are primarily those of law enforcement. It discovers and prevents the committal of indictable offences, searches for those committing 201

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them, and investigates border-related criminal offences occurring within its jurisdiction; it supervises the state border, ensures security at Bosnia’s airports, and controls ofﬁcial crossing points. SBS emphasizes that recruits need police experience if they are to be effective (they go through a three-month transitional course, whereas cadets go through a seventeen-months course), before providing specialized training and a border security qualiﬁcation. In this way it retains some control over its own recruitment, rather than leaving it to an interior ministry. Second, SBS and its EU equivalents share a broad understanding of what is meant by border security. By border security SBS means entry and exit control, the prevention of illegal entry, combating alien smuggling, and performing police functions in the border region. Consequently, SBS checks and controls the movement of people, vehicles and goods at border crossings. In Bosnia’s ten-kilometer border zone (the standard EU depth), SBS searches for illegal immigrants, prevents and/or tracks people trafﬁcking and goods smuggling, and performs other acts related to managing a state border. At the technical level, it implements border control and surveillance (primarily at airports) using standard means such as passport readers, UV lamps, microscopes, detectors for metal, explosives and CO2, and various mirrors. Third, SBS considers its functional strengths to lie in its clear command structure, mobility, and development of an investigative component and an information system. This has been important since SBS’s earliest days – Ambassador Klein and his successors invariably argued that SBS should possess operational ﬂexibility, mobility, strong investigative and intelligence capabilities, and an effective IT network and data server. By 2003 it had 500 computers, more than ninety GPS systems, and a documentation center. In addition, SBS uses modern techniques to deal with insecurity, making regular use (theoretically at least) of strategic planning, risk assessment, intelligence assessments, and policy review cycles. Fourth, in contrast to the pariah position that Bosnia’s unreformed (and unrepentant) police forces ﬁnd themselves in, SBS has been able to capitalize on international support because its formal management strategy includes three EUoriented objectives: to achieve Schengen-type border control in terms of security and increased awareness; to achieve harmonization with EU border control and customs regulations; and to curtail illegal migration to western Europe. SBS has in this way been remarkably successful. Even so, its ﬂaws and vulnerabilities have on occasions offset such advantages. In 2003, SBS judged its weak points to include the level of training offered, its equipment, and the state of its premises.22 This matters because recruitment and training issues can have a disproportionate impact on the effective management of security. Adherence to Schengen standards and the security of EU member states means little when posts are manned by low quality recruits who are incompetent or easily corrupted – and guards are often local entity police who are either badly paid and easily persuaded to look the other way, or are themselves part of smuggling operations. 202

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SBS has tried to address such issues by advertising its recruitment requirements and the working conditions it offers in newspapers, but it continues to have problems recruiting graduates. This is perhaps surprising given the apparent public prestige of the service and the career structure it offers. However, although SBS ofﬁcers earn more than their police peers, their working conditions (i.e. meals, lodging, uniforms) and social guarantees (health care, housing and recreation) are equally bad. Also, police experience is a condition for employment. What assessment, then, can be made of SBS’s management of Bosnia’s security space? The criteria for judging are, inevitably, both political and functional. In 2002, for example, the EC’s Country Strategy Paper 2002–2006 argued that Bosnia should be judged in relation to political factors such as its capacity for European integration. This should in turn “be assessed by reference to its ability to secure democratic principles, the rule of law, respect for human rights and the protection of minorities.” The EC linked this to functional security: “European integration also demands national cohesion and a public administration with the capacity to meet the legislative, regulatory and enforcement challenges which the process entails.”23 SBS goes some way towards meeting such criteria. First, SBS retains its international status as a showcase for a Schengen-style multi-ethnic border service, thereby enabling Bosnian ministers to signal their commitment to EU standards. In 2003, for example, deputy security minister Mektic repeatedly underlined Bosnia’s determination to adopt European standards regarding terrorism, organized crime, and, by extension, border security.24 Second, on the functional side, SBS has enhanced the authority – and revenues – of Bosnia as a credible state. It has made a genuine contribution to ﬁghting cross-border crime and uncontrolled migration, thereby acting as a ﬁlter mechanism for the EU. When SBS was established in 2000, nearly 25,000 of those passing through Sarajevo airport were unaccounted for (the ﬁgure can probably be doubled because Sarajevo was thought to be the starting point for thousands of immigrants from Iran, Turkey, Bangladesh, China, and Sri Lanka), but within twelve months of controls being put in place the ﬁgure had dropped to 9,000. Better leadership, training and equipment means that uncontrolled migration is now handled more effectively. SBS’s operational record in Bosnia’s border regions is, however, mixed. Smuggling has become more difﬁcult in some areas, but SBS has yet to make serious inroads into trafﬁcking. On the other hand, dealing with the minority communities that dominate border areas would be a challenging task for the best of guards. The reasons include the following. An effective centralized border service threatens not only local interests, but also those of some SBS ofﬁcers. Bosnia’s paramilitary and intelligence organizations have long competed for the control of lucrative smuggling routes, and there is no reason why SBS should be an exception.25 Even if this were not the case, SBS cannot affect the most proﬁtable forms of organized crime, because 203

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they are a regional rather than local problem, and regional cooperation leaves much to be desired; it demands a degree of regional coordination at the preventive level (as in exchanges of information), and at the reactive level (joint investigations), which is lacking. And SBS is powerless in the face of organized smuggling operations enjoying political protection. Together these issues emphasize the interlinked nature of border management, and the multi-dimensional nature of Bosnia’s security space. Managing SBS The question of how SBS is itself managed is important too, because SBS is a tool for managing, or manipulating Bosnian security. This applies as much to the U.S. government, the EU, and NATO as to Bosnia’s more successful politicians and criminals, all of whom employ multiple forms of coercion and enticement. Personal pressure or bullying is probably the most usual means of achieving compliance at the formal organization level, given the authority over SBS of personalities like Klein and Ashdown. Both made their frustration with Bosnia’s failure to reform its policing structures clear, and career SBS ofﬁcers will have noted the treatment meted out to obstructive ofﬁcials by Ashdown in particular. In June 2004, he sacked sixty Bosnian Serb ofﬁcials, including the president of the main nationalist Serb Democratic Party and interior minister, and nine senior police and security ofﬁcers, accusing them of harboring war criminals: “We have to get rid of the cancer of obstructionism and corruption . . . and nothing less than major surgery will do.”26 Nine months later he sacked one of Bosnia’s three heads of state, Dragan Covic, the ethnic Croat president: “I decided to require Dragan Covic to step down . . . with immediate effect.”27 Covic later appeared in court on corruption charges, together with the chief justice of Bosnia’s constitutional court. More generally, SBS’s multi-ethnic status appears to have enabled it to avoid much of the intense external pressure Bosnia’s police attracted. Instead the international community has used training programs, technology, and functional guidance as a management means and incentive for cooperation. Of the various programs, those offered by the EU (and, perhaps, the U.S.) are particularly inﬂuential. Many countries offer uncoordinated training packages or resources, the inﬂuence of which depends on the status or largess of the donor, but EU projects (usually delivered through CARDS regional programs and Justice and Home Affairs programs) are undoubtedly authoritative. They include technical, procedural, and structural support, such as assistance in coordinating closure times at border posts, and the provision of supplies required for the construction of crossing posts. From an SBS perspective, alignment with EU standards is desirable, partly because many Bosnians consider themselves to be Europeans, and partly because the EU is seen as a region of plenty; rich in jobs, living standards, democracy, the rule of law, and security. Also, Schengen-style guarding is regarded as the functional gold standard, and 204

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its emphasis on guards being specialist police offers SBS a means to acquire status. Additional insight into the ways in which SBS is able to use technical advice – and, by extension, of the way in which SBS manages security – can be gained from the published statements and activities of international consultants brought in to assess its workings. Thus in 2004 the European Commission (EC) and Bosnian government agreed to implement a series of technical assistance projects dedicated to reform Bosnia’s public administration. A consortium, formed by ICMPD and its Swiss partner TC Team Consult, reviewed SBS’s ﬁnancial sustainability and efﬁciency as part of a broader review to strengthen the rule of law (and thus reorganize the decentralized nature of Bosnia’s constitutional framework).28 The international experts were grouped into an organizational team that focused on SBS’s functional structure, and a ﬁnancial team that reviewed its administrative and budgetary procedures. The data collected was then used to analyse the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) of the current system. The SWOT analysis was then validated at a workshop before a ﬁnal report was submitted to the government in May 2004. SBS evidently cooperated fully with the consortium, though the extent to which it has since acted on their advice is open to question. In summary, it is not always clear why SBS seeks to manage the Bosnian security space as it does, but it is probable that political concerns dominate its decision-making. After all, SBS must ensure its own survival while accommodating or exploiting the demands of international, domestic, and regional interests. SBS is only one of a number of actors seeking to manage Bosnia’s broader state building program, and such programs are invariably associated with struggles for the control of security organizations.

Conclusions SBS plays an important part in Bosnian security, and is in many respects a success story. It is expensive but is amongst the most advanced border systems in the Balkans, and its creation represents a major achievement for the international community. SBS has enhanced the authority of Bosnia as a state by securing important ﬁnancial resources, and by acting as a ﬁlter mechanism for the EU against trans-national crime and uncontrolled migration, while its structure and procedures arguably facilitate sub-state stability. Even so, it faces many problems. Some are unique to Bosnia, and some are typical of the region, but all emphasize that SBS – and, by extension, Bosnian security – operates not only on geographical borders but also across political, functional, and conceptual boundaries. In reality, the development of both SBS and Bosnian security more generally must be understood in terms of a number of competing assumptions, imperatives, functional necessities, and social realities; no one deﬁnition of security can explain why international and Bosnian interpretations of security diverge or 205

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merge as they do. For Bosnian security is, like its structures, the result of multiple political calculations that may have little to do with Bosnia as such. The replacement of the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) by an EU-led peacekeeping force (EUFOR) is a case in point. NATO’s announcement of EUFOR’s role at its June 2004 summit in Istanbul was prompted by EU eagerness to bolster its credibility as a security actor, and by Washington’s determination to declare at least one of its long-term military deployments over.29 Security is in this way manipulated by the EU and NATO as much as by Bosnia’s political and security elite, with each using the term for its own ends; to describe something as a matter of security is to ascribe signiﬁcance to it. The impact of personalities in this process cannot be discounted either. Jacques Klein and Paddy Ashdown have been particularly inﬂuential in shaping the borderrelated aspects of Bosnian security, yet it is entirely possible that Bosnians operating in the sectoral shadows have also manipulated border management to their advantage. On balance, SBS’s record suggests that the Bosnian understanding of Bosnian security challenges today’s state-based orthodoxy. In particular, the state in Bosnia is not (despite international pressure and Ashdown’s fulminations) in the business of territorial exclusion. International authorities may have created a Schengen-style guarding organization, and they may have securitized enforcement issues and promoted cross-border cooperation, yet alternative forms of regional integration continue to exist, and indigenous vested interests retain their resilience. Even now the security concept is underdeveloped, especially at state level. For such reasons SBS tells us more about the nature of international security orthodoxy than about Bosnian security as such. SBS may, like many of its peer organizations, be concerned primarily with “projecting an image of moral resolve and propping up the state’s territorial legitimacy,” but (contrary to what may be the case in the EU), SBS has not grown or expanded on the basis of symbolic power gained from its role as a tool for maintaining Bosnia’s border.30 SBS may have a higher status than the public police, but this results from the international resources poured into guarding, rather than SBS as such. Furthermore, the security of Bosnia’s border regions is arguably more meaningful in ethnic, nationalist, and EU terms than in functional issues. It is probable that greater insight into Bosnian security can be gained from SBS’s vulnerabilities than from its strengths. Five years after its creation, SBS remains reliant on international support for its continued existence. It is subject to institutional sabotage, is powerless in the face of smuggling operations enjoying political protection, and cannot touch the most proﬁtable forms of organized crime because they are a regional rather than local problem. However, no matter what international commentators (and SBS’s formal goals) state, Bosnian authorities have not lost control of Bosnia’s borders, because they never claimed it in the ﬁrst place. For such reasons SBS raises important questions about the boundaries of Bosnia as a political 206

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community, and about the interface between local, national, regional, and international security.

Notes 1 Compare P. Andreas, “Criminalizing Consequences of Sanctions: Embargo Busting and its Legacy,” International Studies Quarterly, 49: 2, 2005, pp. 335–360. 2 T. Donais, The Political Economy of Peacebuilding in Post-Dayton Bosnia, London: Routledge, 2005, p. 10. 3 “Bosnia aid millions go missing,” Sunday Times, 27 July 1997. 4 “Gang warfare rocks streets of Sarajevo,” Sunday Times, 10 November 1996. 5 OHR, “Late Night Newscast Summary,” 19 September 2000. http://www.ohr.int. 6 Special report: Bosnia Herzegovina, “Police forces have travelled far,” Financial Times, 15 November 2005. 7 Ibid. 8 See ICG, Bosnia’s Stalled Police Reform: No Progress, No EU, Report 164, Brussels/Sarajevo, 2005. ICG publications may be found at http://www.crisisgroup. org/library/documents/europe/balkans. All Internet sites were accessed December 2005. 9 ICG quoted in Donais, Political Economy, p. 373. 10 J. Widgren, “Border Control Co-operation,” Working Table III of the Stability Pact, Soﬁa, 5 October 2000. http://www.icmpd.org/default.asp?nav=results&folderid=1&id=146&alltext=widgren+Soﬁa+5+October+2000. 11 This section is based on a series of personal communications and discussions with Jacques Klein, his advisers, SBS ofﬁcers, and Bosnian ofﬁcials, February 2002–March 2003. 12 Borderline, 1, 3, 2000, p. 1. 13 See A. Hills, Border Security in the Balkans: Europe’s Gatekeepers, Adelphi paper No. 371, London: OUP for IISS, 2005, pp. 30–34. 14 Guidelines for the EU’s preferred model of border management were laid down in the Schengen acquis that lays out the written rules and commonly accepted standards for border management within the Schengen sphere. See A. Niemenkari, EU/Schengen Requirements for National Border Security Systems, DCAF Working Paper 8 (March 2002). 15 Compare ICG, Bosnia’s Nationalist Governments: Paddy Ashdown and the Paradoxes of State Building, Balkans Report Number 146, Sarajevo/Brussels, 2003; G. Knaus and F. Martin, “Travails of the European Raj: Lessons from Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Democracy, 14: 3, 2003, pp. 60–74. 16 Council of EU, “EU Action against Organised Crime in the Western Balkans,” CRIMORG 88, 2 December 2003. 17 Europeaid, “Regional co-operation.” http://europa.eu.int/comm/europeaid/projects/ cards/regional. 18 J. Hylton, “Security Sector Reform: BiH Federation Ministry of the Interior,” International Peacekeeping, 9: 1, 2002, p. 161. 19 EUPM, “PPID Daily Media Summary,” 12 August 2005. http://www.eupm.org/ Clanci.asp?ID=200&lang=eng. 20 ICG, EUFOR-IA: Changing Bosnia’s Security Arrangements, Brussels/Sarajevo, 2004, p. 8. 21 See SFOR, “Main News Summary,” 12 February 2004. http://www.nato.int/sfor/ media/2004/ms040212.htm. 22 Private communication, January 2003. 207

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23 EC, Bosnia and Herzegovina: Country Strategy Paper 2002–2006, p. 14. http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/cards/pdf/publications/bosnia_country_strategy.pdf. 24 Bosnia and Herzegovina Ministry of Security, “National Action Plan for the ﬁght against organised crime,” 16 October 2003. http://formin.ﬁnland.ﬁ/doc/ﬁn/ euasiat/phare_twinn/Bosnia_ja_Hertsegovina/Action_Plan.pdf. 25 S. Woodward, “In Whose Interest is Security Sector Reform: Lessons from the Balkans,” in G. Cawthra and R. Luckham (eds), Governing Insecurity: Democratic Control of Military and Security Establishments in Transitional Democracies, London: Zed, 2003, p. 279. 26 BBC News, “Crackdown over Karadzic arrest failure,” 30 June 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3853055.stm. 27 “Srebrenica suspect surrenders,” Al Jazeera, 29 March 2005. http://english. aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/D9B0B8CC-D6C6-4EF3-A31B-A129C3E537F8.htm. 28 ICMPD, “Financial, Organisational and Administrative Assessment of the BiH Police Forces and the State Border Service.” http://www.icmpd.org/default. asp?nav=activities&folderid=398&id=317&subfolderId=18. 29 See ICG, EUFOR: Changing Bosnia’s Security Arrangements, Brieﬁng No. 31, 2004. 30 Contrast P. Andreas, “Redrawing the Line: Borders and Security in the Twenty-ﬁrst Century,” International Security, 28: 2, 2003, pp. 110–111.

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9/11 see September 11 (2001) attacks Abdel-Gayyad, Mohammed 98 Abdic, Fikret 81 ABiH (Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina) 77 Abu Hamza al-Masri 103, 110 Abu el-Ma’ali (Abdelkader Mokhtari, “The Gendarme”) 102–7, 109–12 Abul-Harith al-Liby (Mohammed Abdel-wahab Yousef) 101, 104, 105 accession to EU: democratization 57, 59; environmental security 119, 129, 132; media and security 147–8; police reform 183; power-sharing 40, 42, 43, 44; State Border Service 203 Active Islamic Youth (Aktivna Islamska Omladina, AIO) 110, 111 advertising 139, 146, 147, 149 AFBiH see Armed Forces of BosniaHerzegovina Afghanistan: defense reform 157, 169; EU and NATO security 7; mujahideen network 2, 3, 96–101, 106, 109, 110; State Border Service 193 AGAI (Al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya) 97–101, 103–4, 106, 107, 109 Agency for Investigation and Documentation (AID) 194 aid: aftermath of war 85; clandestine political economy 71, 88, 90, 91n34; defense policy 9, 10; democratization 57, 66, 67; environmental security 123, 125, 126, 130; media and security 144; persistence of war 76, 78, 79; State Border Service 193–4; termination of war 82 AIO see Aktivna Islamska Omladina air pollution 122, 125, 126, 136n33

airports: clandestine political economy 76, 77, 79, 80, 92n44; State Border Service 197, 202, 203 Aktivna Islamska Omladina (Active Islamic Youth, AIO) 110, 111 Albania: clandestine political economy 87, 88; environmental security 127, 130; EU and NATO security 14, 16; mujahideen network 101, 107, 108, 110; partition 43 “Albanian Returnees” 108 Albright, Madeline 15 alcohol smuggling 86, 193 Algeria: Afghan cauldron 97; Balkan coalition of mujahideen 102; Dayton accords 104; Egyptian jihad 98, 100; westward march of terrorism 106, 108, 109 America see United States An-Nahda (“Islamic Revival”) 100 Andabaka, Ivan 194 Andan, Dragomir 195 Arab-Afghan mujahideen 98, 100, 102–4, 106, 112, 113 ARBiH see Army of the Republic of BiH Arbour, Justice Louise 144 Arizona market 86–7 “Arkan” (Zˇeljko Razˇnatovic) 74, 75, 157 Armed Forces of Bosnia-Herzegovina (AFBiH) 169 Armed Islamic Group see Groupe Islamique Armée armies: clandestine political economy 77, 78, 80, 81, 82; defense reform 156–7, 160, 162–3, 166, 171n48; EU and NATO security 10, 11, 13, 16, 18; power-sharing or partition 42; see also army reform arms embargo: clandestine political

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economy 71–3, 82–4, 87; defense reform 164; EU and NATO security 8, 9, 11, 14; power-sharing or partition 24 arms supplies: clandestine political economy 73–6, 78–9, 80–4, 86–9, 93n82; defense reform 158, 160–2, 164, 167, 169, 172n48; environmental security 128, 129, 130, 131; EU and NATO security 18, 42; police reform 179; State Border Service 193, 196; terrorism 2, 4, 109 Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina (ABiH) 77 Army of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia see Yugoslav National Army (JNA) Army of the Federation of BiH (VF) 158, 159, 160, 161, 162 Army of the Republic of BiH (ARBiH) 103, 156–8, 162, 167, 168 Army of Republika Srpska (VRS, Bosnian Serb Army) 81, 155–8, 163, 164, 167, 169n5 army reform: defense reform 155, 156, 159, 168; OHR, Orao and DRC 164–6; paramilitaries and “weekend ﬁghters” 156–8; power-sharing or partition 41, 43; security building measures 161; Train and Equip Program 161–2 Asharq al-Aswat 97, 104 Ashdown, Paddy: defense reform 155, 164, 165, 166, 171n44; media 148; power-sharing or partition 41, 50n73; State Border Service 199, 204, 206 Atlas, P. M. 29 Atmani, Karim Said 111, 112 al-’Attar, Sabri Ibrahim 108 Attié, C. 32 Austria 81, 101 autonomy see regional autonomy Azzam, Abdullah 97, 100, 101 Babic, Dusan 141, 150 “Badzˇa” (Radovan Stojicˇic) 73 Bajramovic, Ismet see “C´elo” Balkans 6–19; Bosnian crisis 9–13; environmental security 127; EU security overview 6–7, 18–19; European security in 1991 7–9; mujahideen network see mujahideen; power-sharing or partition 24, 42, 43; transformed EU and NATO security 13–18 Bangladesh 27, 37, 38, 39, 203

Banja Luka 12, 69n17, 81, 126, 149, 180 Barak, O. 29 Basque separatists, Spain 32, 36, 39 Bayley, David 177 Bedr Bosna 111, 113 Belgium 8, 9, 18, 19 Belgrade 54, 73, 74, 88, 129 Belkacem, Bensayeh (“Majed”) 109 Beric, Gojko 147 Berlin plan 13, 14 “Berlin Plus” plan 17, 18 Besic, Muhammed 109 BH Dani newspaper 145, 146 BiH see Bosnia-Herzegovina Bihac 11, 12, 80, 81, 130 Bijeljina 53, 164 Bildt, Carl 54–5, 144, 159 “Bildt TV” (OBN) 144, 145, 153n26 Bin Laden, Usama 96, 97, 98, 102–3, 106, 108 Black Legion 157 black market: outbreak of war 71, 73, 74, 75; persistence of war 80; Sarajevo siege 76, 77, 78, 79; termination of war 82, 83 Blair, Tony 14 BLRC see Brcˇko Law Revision Commission Bojicic, V. 78 Bonn-Petersberg agreement 177, 178 Bonn Powers of OHR 41, 55, 69n13, 164, 171n36 border security 191–207; Bosnia geography 191–2; clandestine political economy 86; environmental security 128, 129, 131; EU accession 42; managing security 199–205; overview 2, 191–2, 205–7; police reform 179, 183, 188n11; politics 199–200; powersharing or partition 29, 42, 43; security spaces 193–5; State Border Service 196–9, 200–5 Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH): aftermath of war 84–7; education 60–1, 62; elections 61–4; environmental security 124–6, 196; EU security overview 6, 7, 18–19; geography 124, 191–2; governance 56–8; infrastructure 125, 126, 132, 196; outbreak of war 9–13, 72–5; persistence of war 75–81; population demographics 51, 53–4, 125; power-sharing or partition 39–43, 43–5;

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Bosnia-Herzegovina continued rule of law 58–60; security in and of 1–4, 192; termination of war 81–4; transformed EU and NATO security 13–18; see also clandestine political economy; defense reform; democratization; environmental security; media and security; mujahideen; police reform Bosnian Serb Army see Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) Bosnian Serbs: clandestine political economy 72–5, 78, 82, 85; defense reform 167; democratization 53, 55, 60, 61; EU and NATO security 9, 10, 11, 12; power-sharing or partition 24, 42; State Border Service 195, 204; see also Serbs Bouchar, Abdelmajid 112 Boudella, Al Hajj 109 Brcˇko 51–67; background of 53–4, 187n8; education 60–1, 62; elections 61–4; governance 56–8; overview 51–3, 66–7; population 51; post war 54–6; public conﬁdence 64–6; rule of law 58–60; State Border Service 200 Brcˇko Law Revision Commission (BLRC) 59, 60 Brcˇko Supervisor (Deputy High Representative for Brcˇko) 55–8, 60, 63, 66, 70n55 bridges 11, 12, 125, 150 Britain see United Kingdom BSD (Border Service Directorate) 197–8 Burns, Nicholas 43 Bush, George H. W. 9 Bush, George W. 7, 195 Cahen, Michel 34 Camp Connor 109 Canada 12, 17, 120, 130, 136n46, 152n7 cantons 23, 24, 86, 128, 187n8 car bombs 104, 107, 148 car trafﬁcking 74, 84, 86, 193, 196 CARDS see Community Assistance for Reconstruction, Development and Stabilization Carty, Kevin 195 Cavic, Dragan 63 Caze, Christophe 107 “C´elo” (Ismet Bajramovic) 77, 92n41 ´ engic, Hasan 82, 85, 94n85 C

censorship, media 140, 142, 143 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 83, 101, 104, 107, 108, 194 centralized power-sharing 28, 40–4, 46n13 Ceric, Mustafa 145–8, 153n33, 153n34, 154n40 Cetnik Movement 74, 157 CFSP see Common Foreign and Security Policy Chandler, David 141 Charette, Hervé de 10, 13 Chechnya 67, 167, 171n29 China 27, 152n7, 203 Chirac, Jacques 11, 12 Choulah, Zoheir (“Abdul Barr”) 107, 112 Christopher, Warren 10 CIA see Central Intelligence Agency cigarettes 78, 84, 86, 88, 136n33, 193 civil society 119, 128, 131, 132, 139, 140 civil wars see ethnic civil wars CJTFs see Combined Joint Task Forces clandestine political economy 71–90; aftermath of war 84–7; extensions 87–9; outbreak of war 72–5; overview 71–2, 89–90; persistence of war 75–81; termination of war 81–4 Clark, General Wesley 14, 15, 155, 168 Clarke, Henry 61, 63, 70n55 Clinton, Bill 10, 13 Clinton administration 7, 83, 161 “CNN effect” 139 Cobban, H. 32 Combined Joint Task Forces (CJTFs) 9, 13, 14 Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) 7, 8, 16 Community Assistance for Reconstruction, Development and Stabilization (CARDS) 127, 129, 198, 199, 204 conﬁdence building 64–6, 160–1, 168 Conﬁdence and Security-Building Measures (CSBMs) 160, 168 conﬂict management: clandestine political economy 89, 90; democratization 51, 52; environmental security 118, 122, 123, 124 constitutional reform 65, 66, 67 Contact Group 14, 24, 144, 161, 170n23 Copenhagen 99, 100 Correlates of War database 26 corruption: border security 130, 193, 194, 204; clandestine political economy 81,

214

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84, 85, 87, 89; democratization 57, 59, 66, 67; environmental security 130, 131, 132; human rights 149, 178; media 149; police reform 174, 176, 178, 180–1, 182; terrorism 4, 131 Council of Europe 40, 41, 84 Covic, Dragan 63, 204 crime: clandestine political economy 71–2, 74–8, 84–5, 88–90; defense reform 156, 163, 167; environmental security 130, 131; police reform 174, 176–8, 180–2, 185; power-sharing or partition 34; State Border Service 192, 193–4, 196, 200–4, 205–6; terrorism 3, 4, 131; see also war crimes Croatia: clandestine political economy 72, 83, 84, 87, 93n82; defense reform 158, 159, 160, 161; democratization 54; environmental security 122, 127–30, 134n20; EU and NATO security 2, 6, 9, 11, 12; media and security 142, 144, 147; power-sharing or partition 37, 38; State Border Service 191, 192, 200 Croatian Defense Council (HVO) 80, 105, 156–8, 162, 168 Croatian Defense Union (HOS) 157 Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) 63–4, 72, 85, 142–4 Croat-Muslim Federation see Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina Croats: clandestine political economy 72, 73, 78, 80, 81, 82; defense reform 156, 157, 161, 166; democratization 53, 55, 57–61, 64–6; media and security 142, 144; mujahideen network 104; police reform 179; power-sharing or partition 23, 24, 41, 44 CSBMs see Conﬁdence and Security-Building Measures Cutileiro, José 9, 23, 24 Cutileiro Plan 10 Cvjetinovic, Savo 42 Cyprus 16, 17 Danube River 53, 129, 130, 135n26 Dayton Peace Accords (DPA, GFAP): clandestine political economy 86; defense reform 155, 158–62, 164–6, 168; democratization 54, 55, 56; environmental security 118, 119, 126, 130, 132, 137n53; EU and NATO security 1, 2, 3, 10, 13; media and

security 141, 143, 144, 148, 150; mujahideen network 103–6, 107, 108; police reform 173, 174, 177, 185, 186, 187n8; power-sharing or partition 24, 38, 40–2, 44; State Border Service 191–4, 196 de Hoop Scheffer, Jaap 19 de Klerk, F. W. 34 defense policy 6–19; Bosnian crisis 9–13; clandestine political economy 89; European security in 1991 7–9; overview 6–7, 18–19; transformed EU and NATO security 13–18 defense reform 155–69; armies, paramilitaries and “weekend ﬁghters” 156–8; conﬁdence and security building measures 160–1; Dayton and beyond 159–60; downsizing 162–3; OHR, Orao and DRC 163–6; overview 155–6, 168–9; power-sharing or partition 42; privatization 167–8; Train and Equip Program 161–2 Defense Reform Commission (DRC) 155, 156, 164, 165, 166 demobilization 156–60, 168, 201 democratization 51–67; background of Brcˇko 53–4; clandestine political economy 85; education 60–1, 62; elections 61–4, 68n7; governance 56–8; media and security 139, 149, 150; overview 51–3, 66–7; police reform 173, 177; post war 54–6; public conﬁdence 64–6; rule of law 58–60; State Border Service 203, 204 Denmark 17, 99, 100, 195 depleted uranium shells 119, 125, 126 Deputy SACEUR (DSACEUR) 13, 16, 17 DGS (Drzˇavna Granicˇa Sluzˇba) see State Border Service -Dind-ic, Zoran 88, 89, 172n55 disarmament 158, 159, 168 disguised victory (power-sharing) 29–30, 31, 33–5, 36–7 District of Brcˇko see Brcˇko Djabo, Mirsad 64 Djogo, Risto 147 DMT (District Management Team) 57–8 Dnevni avaz newspaper 146 Dobrinja 77, 79 Dodik, Milorad 69n17 Donais, T. 193

215

INDEX

downsizing of armies 58, 158, 159, 162–3, 166 DPA see Dayton Peace Accords Draskovic, Vuk 157 DRC see Defense Reform Commission Drina River 12, 124, 129 drugs trafﬁcking: clandestine political economy 86, 88; environmental security 128, 129, 130; police reform 180, 182; State Border Service 193, 194, 196 Drzˇavna Granicˇa Sluzˇba (DGS) see State Border Service DSACEUR see Deputy SACEUR Dulovic, Jovan 74, 75 Durisic, Juska 146 Dutch peacekeeping forces 11, 12, 13; see also the Netherlands Dziedzic, Michael 185 Dzˇigal, Raif 79 Eagle Base 109, 110 EC see European Commission; European Community ecocide 119, 122, 125 ecology 118, 120, 123, 128, 131 economy: aftermath of war 84, 85–6; clandestine political economy 71, 89, 95n107; democratization 66; environmental security 122, 131; media and security 144; outbreak of war 73; State Border Service 193, 200 eco-tourism 125, 130 education 60–1, 62, 70n37 Egypt: mujahideen network 97, 98–101, 106, 107, 108; power-sharing or partition 32; Train and Equip Program 162 Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) 97, 107, 108 Ekof 131 elections: democratization 51, 54, 58, 61–4, 66, 68n7; media and security 143, 144, 145, 148, 149; police reform 174; power-sharing or partition 35, 41; State Border Service 200 embargoes: clandestine political economy 71–3, 82–4, 87; defense reform 164; EU and NATO security 8, 9, 11, 14; powersharing or partition 24 embassy terrorist attacks 101, 108, 111, 113 environmental impact assessment 118, 119, 129, 130

environmental security 118–32; in Bosnia 124–6; broader concerns 126–7; and national security 121–4; overview 118–19, 128–32; post-Cold War 119–21; State Border Service 196 EOD see Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit Erceg, Heni 143 Erotel 144 ESDI see European Security and Defense Identity ESDP see European Security and Defense Policy ethnic civil wars: democratization in Brcˇko 53; disqualiﬁed cases 35–9; environmental security 119, 121, 128, 132; Humpty Dumpty theory of ethnic conﬂict 25–9; lessons for Bosnia 39–43; media and security 141–3, 147; mujahideen network 102; overview 24, 25; power-sharing 29–35, 45n9 ethnic cleansing: democratization in Brcˇko 53–4, 59; environmental security 128, 132; EU and NATO security 16; media and security 74, 142; police reform 174, 175, 176, 178, 179; power-sharing or partition 24, 44 ethnic hostility: clandestine political economy 73, 87; defense reform 155, 163, 166, 167, 169; democratization 57, 61, 62, 64, 65; environmental security 119, 122, 128, 132; EU and NATO security 10; media and security 139, 141–3, 144, 145–8, 149, 150–1; mujahideen network 102; police reform 176, 178–80; power-sharing or partition 23, 24, 25–9, 41 ethnic separation 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 41 EU see European Union EUFOR see European Union Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina EUPM see European Union Police Mission European Commission (EC) 42, 205 European Community (EC) 7, 8, 9, 72, 144 European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI) 8, 9, 14 European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) 7, 17, 18 European Union (EU) 6–19; Bosnian crisis 9–13; clandestine political economy 83, 86, 89; defense policy overview 6–7,

216

INDEX

18–19; defense reform 161, 169; democratization 58, 59; environmental security 120, 127, 128, 129, 130; European security in 1991 7–9; Headline Goal 16, 17; media and security 147–8; North African mujahideen network 99, 103; police reform 181, 182, 183, 186, 187; powersharing or partition 40, 41, 42, 43, 44–5; State Border Service 191–3, 196–8, 199, 201–3, 204–6; transformed EU and NATO security 13–18 European Union (EU) accession: democratization 57, 59; environmental security 119, 129, 132; media and security 147–8; police reform 183; power-sharing or partition 40, 42, 43, 44; State Border Service 203 European Union Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina 2, 18, 169, 181, 195, 206 European Union Police Mission (EUPM): democratization 59; EU and NATO security 17; police reform 173, 181, 182, 185; State Border Service 198, 200 European Union Special Representative (EUSR) see Ofﬁce of the High Representative Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit (EOD) 169 extremism see Islamic extremism al-Fadl, Jamal 103 Faragalla, Ahmad (Imad el-Misri) 109 Farrand, Peter 67 Farrand, Robert 55, 63, 70n55 Fazlic, Izmet 110 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 98 Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina: clandestine political economy 83, 86, 87; defense reform 159, 160, 161, 162–3, 164–6; democratization 54, 56, 57, 63; environmental security 127, 135n27; EU and NATO security 10; media and security 150; police reform 177, 178, 179, 187n8; power-sharing or partition 24, 40, 42, 44; State Border Service 194, 197, 200 Ferhadija Mosque 180 Fett, Patrick J. 26, 27, 34 Fijuljanin, Sabahudin 110, 111 Final Award (1999) 56, 59, 60, 66 “Florence Agreement” 160

Foca 179 food supplies 78, 79, 80, 91n34, 123 France: Bosnian crisis 11, 12, 13; EU security overview 7, 18, 19; European security in 1991 7, 8, 9; North African mujahideen network 102, 103, 106, 107; transformed EU and NATO security 13, 14, 15, 16 fraud 57, 61, 81 freedom of expression 142, 143 freedom of information 57 “Frenki” (Franko Simatovic) 73 fuel supplies: clandestine political economy 78, 79, 80, 81; environmental security 125, 126; State Border Service 193 Galbraith, Peter 83 Al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya (AGAI) 97–101, 103–4, 106, 107, 109 GEF see Global Environment Facility “The Gendarme” see Abu el-Ma’ali General Framework Agreement for Peace (GFAP) see Dayton Peace Accords Georgia 27, 36, 38, 39 Germany: Bosnian crisis 11, 12; clandestine political economy 82; democratization 51; EU and NATO security 14, 16, 17, 18, 19; European security in 1991 7–8, 9; media and security 139; Nazism 139, 151n3, 152n4, 152n7 GFAP (General Framework Agreement for Peace) see Dayton Peace Accords GIA see Groupe Islamique Armée Gleick, Peter 123 Global Environment Facility (GEF), World Bank 127 Gorazde 11, 12 Gotovina, Ante 88 governance 56–8, 121 government: aftermath of war 84, 85; Croatia 87; democratization 54–6, 57–8, 60, 64, 66; environmental security 131; outbreak of war 73, 74; persistence of war 75, 77, 78, 80, 81; police reform 177; termination of war 82, 83 Grbavica 76, 78 Great Britain see United Kingdom Grebo, Zdravko 84 Greece 12, 16, 17 Gropas, Ruby 129, 132

217

INDEX

Groupe Islamique Armée (Armed Islamic Group, GIA) 100, 102, 106, 109 GSPC see Salaﬁst Group for Prayer and Combat Guantánamo Bay, Cuba 109 Guatemala 29, 31, 35, 40, 152n7 Guesmia, Redouane 110 Gulf War 2, 6, 8, 151n4 Gurr, Ted Robert 26 The Hague war crimes tribunals 75, 88, 144, 165, 169, 171n42 Hamzic, Ismet 77 hard-authoritarian media systems 140, 152n7 Hartzell, C. A. 28, 45n9 hate speech 141, 143, 144, 147, 151 Al-Hayat 108 Hays, Donald 41 hazardous waste 125, 126, 127 HDZ see Croatian Democratic Union Headline Goal (EU) 16, 17 health threats 118, 125, 126, 135n31 Helsinki plan 16 Herzegovina 23, 124, 142; see also Bosnia-Herzegovina Hoddie, M. 28, 45n9 Holbrooke, Richard: clandestine political economy 94n92; defense reform 155, 159, 168, 169n1; NATO retaliation 13; police reform 175; power-sharing or partition 24 Homer-Dixon, Thomas 121 HOS see Croatian Defense Union hostage-taking 11, 12 human rights: democratization 52, 68n7; environmental security 120; media and security 148; police reform 176, 177–8, 181, 185; power-sharing or partition 35; State Border Service 200, 203 human security: environmental security 118; media 138, 151n2; police reform 181, 182, 184 human trafﬁcking: environmental security 128; police reform 180, 181, 182, 186; State Border Service 196, 202 Humpty Dumpty theory of ethnic conﬂict 25–9 Hungary 43, 87 Hurd, Douglas 10 HVO see Croatian Defense Council hydroelectric power 121, 128, 129

ICI see Islamic Cultural Institute ICTY see International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ideological civil wars 25, 26, 28, 30, 31, 32 IEBL see Inter-Entity Boundary Line IFOR see Implementation Force Igman, Mt. 12, 79 IHF see International Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights IISS see International Institute for Strategic Studies Ilidzˇa 79, 80 immigration: clandestine political economy 75, 85, 86; environmental security 129; State Border Service 191, 192, 198, 200, 202, 203 IMMPACT project 198 Implementation Force (IFOR): defense reform 158, 159, 160, 168; peacekeeping 2, 13; police reform 175, 176 India 27, 36, 39 Indonesia 27, 152n4 industrialization 118, 124, 125, 132 infrastructure: environmental security 125, 126, 132, 196; media and security 141, 142, 145 Institute for War and Peace Reporting 144 integrated border management 198, 199 intelligence services: defense reform 164; EU and NATO security 15, 17; State Border Service 194, 200, 202, 203 Inter-Entity Boundary Line (IEBL) 56, 183 Inter-Entity Steering Committee for the Environment 127, 129 Interim (Rome) Award 55 International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), The Hague 75, 88, 144, 165, 169, 171n42 International Crisis Group 2, 42, 63, 69n20, 176, 180 International Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (IHF) 148, 149 International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) 156–7 International Organization for Migration (IOM) 168, 170n28, 200 International Police Task Force (IPTF): defense reform 159; democratization 59; police reform 173, 174–6, 177–9,

218

INDEX

180–2, 184–6; State Border Service 196, 197, 198, 201 international relations (IR) 119, 120 Interpol (International Criminal Police Organization) 98, 112, 200 IOM see International Organization for Migration IPTF see International Police Task Force IR see international relations Iran: clandestine political economy 82, 83, 86; defense reform 157, 162; EU and NATO security 8; mujahideen network 104; power-sharing or partition 27; State Border Service 194, 203 Iraq: defense reform 164, 167, 168, 169; environmental security 125; EU and NATO security 2, 3, 6–8, 15, 16, 19; Gulf War 2, 6, 8, 151n4; media and security 152n7; mujahideen network 96, 98, 110, 112; power-sharing or partition 27, 32 Islamic Cultural Institute (ICI) 100, 112 Islamic extremism: Afghan cauldron 97, 98; Balkan coalition of mujahideen 96, 101, 102; Dayton accords 103, 104, 105; media and security 139; new base for Egyptian jihad 99–101; revival of jihad 110–13; State Border Service 194; terrorism 2, 106–9 Israel 16, 27, 36, 39, 108 Istanbul 2, 82, 165, 206 Italy 8, 14, 99, 100, 106, 107 Izetbegovic, Alija 106, 141, 142, 146 Janvier, Lt. Gen. Bernard 12 Japan 51, 143 Al-Jazeera 139 jihad: Afghan cauldron 96, 97, 98; Balkan coalition of mujahideen 96, 102; Dayton accords 104; new base for Egyptian jihad 98–101; revival of 110–13; westward march of terrorism 3, 106, 108 JMC see Joint Military Commission JNA see Yugoslav National Army Jocic, Dragan 112 Johnson, Susan 66, 70n55 Joint Military Commission (JMC) 162 Jordan 27, 152n7 journalists: clandestine political economy 80; harassment of 148, 151, 154n41, 154n50; media and security 141–2, 144–5, 148–51

Judah, T. 74 judiciary 59, 60 “Juka” (Jusuf Prazina) 76–7, 92n39 Jumah, Omar Yousef (Abu Anas al-Shami) 112 Juppé, Alain 10 Juric, Mile 201 Kaldor, M. 78 Kalinic, Dragan 42 Kamel, Fateh 107, 111, 112 Kaplan, Robert 122 Karadzˇic, Radovan 23, 74, 85, 144, 165, 169 Kaufmann, Chaim: Humpty Dumpty theory of ethnic conﬂict 25, 26, 27, 28, 29; on power-sharing 30, 32, 34, 35, 39, 45n4 Kent, M. 145 Kertes, Mihalj 74 KFOR (Kosovo Force) 16, 110 Khartoum 82, 103 Kherchtou, L’Houssaine 100 Kinkel and Juppé European Action Plan 10 Kiseljak 80 KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) 87–8 Klein, Jacques: clandestine political economy 86–7; police reform 181; State Border Service 196, 199, 202, 204, 206 Knindzi paramilitaries 157 Kohlmann, Evan F. 194 Koljevic, Nikola 74 Kopanja, Zeljko 148 al-Korshani, Salim 106–7 Kosovo: clandestine political economy 87, 88; defense reform 159, 167, 168, 171n29; environmental security 134n20, 135n26; EU and NATO security 7, 14, 15, 16; North African mujahideen network 108, 110; power-sharing or partition 24, 43, 44; State Border Service 195 Kovac, Janez 144 Kovac, Relja 201 Krajina 12, 81 Krajisˇnik, Momcilo 80 Kurspahic, Kemal 142, 147 Kyoto Protocol 7, 128 Lahmar, Saber 109 Lake, D. A. 28 Lake plan 12

219

INDEX

landmines: clandestine political economy 82; defense reform 168, 169; democratization 55; environmental security 123, 125, 126, 127, 135n27; EU and NATO security 8, 9, 15 law: clandestine political economy 86; democratization 58–60, 61; environmental security 126, 127; media 139, 149; police reform 174, 176–7, 180, 185; State Border Service 203, 204, 205 Leakey, Maj. Gen. David 195 Lebanon 27, 29, 30–2, 35–6, 38–9, 107 “Legija” (Milorad Lukovic) 88, 89 Leutar, Jozo 194 liberal-democratic, market-oriented media systems 140, 152n) Libya 83, 101 Licklider, R. 29, 45n9 “lift and strike” policy 10, 12 looting 71, 74, 75, 77, 87, 89 Lucˇarevic, Kerim 78 Lukac, Dragan 195 Lukavica 79, 197 Lukovic, Milorad (“Legija”) 88, 89 Luxembourg 9, 18 Maastricht Summit 6, 8 Mabruk, Ahmad Salamah 108 Macedonia: clandestine political economy 88; EU and NATO security 7, 14, 16, 17; power-sharing or partition 24, 43 Madrid attacks (2004) 2, 112, 195 Maghrebi mujahideen 96, 100, 104 al-Maghribi, Abu Usama 112 “Majed” (Bensayeh Belkacem) 109 Malaysia 82, 83, 162 Mali 37, 38–9 Mandela, Nelson 40 Mandic, Momcilo 85 marketplaces 10, 12, 86–7 Mason, T. David 26, 27, 34 Mason-Fett database 27 al-Masri, Abu Farida 112 MCMPM see Ministerial Consultative Meeting on Police Matters MEC (Media Experts Commission) 143 media and security 138–51; after Dayton 143–5; Bosnian ethnicity and civil war 141–3; in ex-Yugoslavia 140–1; harassment 148, 151, 154n41; intercommunal tensions 145–8;

mujahideen network 96; overview 138, 150–1; professionalism and security 148–50; theoretical perspective 138–9 medical supplies 78, 105, 125 Mektic, Dragan 203 Menchu, Rigoberto 35 Meo, L. M. T. 32 mercenaries 156, 157, 163, 167 migration: clandestine political economy 86; environmental security 122, 129; State Border Service 191–4, 196, 198, 202–3, 205 Mikerevic, Dragan 42 Mikesell, Raymond 124 Milan 100, 101, 108, 112 Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI) 162, 167, 168 Milosˇevic, Slobodan: clandestine political economy 74, 88, 90n12; EU and NATO security 13, 14; media and security 141, 142, 147; Train and Equip Program 161 Milutinovic, Milovan 81 mines see landmines Ministerial Consultative Meeting on Police Matters (MCMPM) 194 Ministries of Defense 155, 158, 162, 163, 165 Ministry of the Interior (MUP) 73, 74, 77, 85, 88 minority police recruitment 178–9 minority returns: democratization 66; environmental security 130; police reform 174, 176, 178–80, 181, 184, 188n23; State Border Service 203 el-Misri, Imad (Ahmad Faragalla) 109 Mitrovica 16 Mladic, Ratko 12, 13, 144, 165, 171n43 Mokhtari, Abdelkader see Abu el-Ma’ali Montenegro: clandestine political economy 89; defense reform 167, 168; environmental security 127; EU and NATO security 9; power-sharing or partition 24, 43, 44 Moore, Patrick 146 Morocco 98, 100 Moscow 2, 82 Mostar: democratization 58, 67, 70n53; EU and NATO security 9; media and security 143, 150; mujahideen network 107 Mozambique 27, 29, 31, 34, 40

220

INDEX

MPRI see Military Professional Resources Incorporated Mubarak, Hosni 100 “El-Mudzahedin Unit”: Balkan coalition of mujahideen 102; Dayton accords 103, 105; defense reform 157; new base for Egyptian jihad 98; revival of jihad 110, 111, 112; westward march of terrorism 107, 109 Mugabe, Robert 33 mujahideen 96–113; Afghan cauldron 96–8; Balkan coalition 101–3; Dayton accords 103–6; defense reform 157; media and security 152n6; new base for Egyptian jihad 98–101; revival of jihad 110–13; State Border Service 195; westward march of terrorism 106–9 MUP see Ministry of the Interior Al-Murabeton 99 Muslim-Croat Federation see Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina Muslims: clandestine political economy 72–4, 78, 81, 83, 85; democratization in Brcˇko 54; environmental security 132; EU and NATO security 9, 10; media and security 146, 153n33; mujahideen network 97, 98–101, 103, 104, 106, 113; paramilitaries 157; power-sharing or partition 23–4, 30, 32, 35, 41, 44; Shiite Muslims 30, 104; State Border Service 194; Sunni Muslims 30, 31, 32, 96; see also Islamic extremism NAC see North Atlantic Council al-Naggar, Ahmed Ibrahim 108 National Liberation Army (NLA) 88 national security 120, 121–4, 126, 148 nationalism: clandestine political economy 84, 85; defense reform 157; democratization 61, 63, 64; elections 61, 63, 64, 146; EU and NATO security 4, 6; media 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 148; police reform 179, 180, 182, 184; State Border Service 193, 200 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) 6–19; Bosnian crisis 9–13; clandestine political economy 81, 86; defense policy overview 6–7, 7–9, 18–19; defense reform 155, 159, 163, 165–6, 168–9, 171n42; environmental security 135n26; media and security 143; mujahideen network 104, 107, 109;

police reform 174, 175, 176, 181, 185; power-sharing or partition 24, 40, 42, 43; purpose of 8; retaliation by 12–13; State Border Service 199, 201, 204, 206; terrorism 2, 107, 109; transformed EU and NATO security 13–18 natural disasters 120, 122 natural resources 119–21, 123, 124, 129, 130 Nazism 139, 151n3, 152n4, 152n7 Neretva River 79, 124, 130 the Netherlands 8, 11, 12, 13, 19, 197 New York terrorist attacks 99, 104, 106, 109 newspapers: clandestine political economy 78, 84; cost 152n11; intercommunal tensions 141, 142, 145, 146; media professionalism 148, 149 Nezavisne Novine newspaper 148 NGOs see non-governmental organizations Nicaragua 27, 32, 36, 39, 151n1, 152n7 NLA see National Liberation Army no-ﬂy zones 9, 10–11 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 123, 131, 132, 137n53 North African mujahideen network see mujahideen North Atlantic Council (NAC) 12, 13 North Atlantic Treaty Organization see NATO Northern Ireland 35, 37, 48n46 NRF (NATO Response Force) 17 nuclear waste 127, 130 OBN see Open Broadcasting Network Ofﬁce of the High Representative (OHR): defense reform 156, 163–4, 166, 168, 169n4, 171n36; democratization 54–5, 58, 59, 69n13; EU and NATO security 2; media and security 143, 144, 149; police reform 177, 183; power-sharing or partition 40, 41, 42, 43; State Border Service 196, 197, 198, 199, 200 oil: clandestine political economy 84, 85, 88; environmental security 120, 121, 123, 125, 135n26; State Border Service 193 Open Broadcasting Network (OBN, “Bildt TV”) 144, 145, 153n26 Operation Amber Fox 17 Operation Badr 111 Operation Sphinx 112

221

INDEX

Operation Storm 12 opinion polls 52, 59–60, 61–3, 64–6, 68n6 Orao affair 164, 168 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE): defense reform 156, 158–62, 168; democratization 57; environmental security 137n53; EU and NATO security 14; media and security 143, 144 organized crime: clandestine political economy 88, 89; defense reform 163, 167; environmental security 130, 131; police reform 174, 180–1, 182; State Border Service 192–4, 196, 200, 203, 206; terrorism “safe haven” 4 OSCE see Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Oslo peace accords (1993) 39 Oslobed-enje newspaper 78, 84, 142 Owen-Stoltenberg Peace Plan 10, 24 Pakistan 27, 78, 82, 98, 100 Pale 11, 69n17, 142, 144, 147 Palestine 32, 36, 39, 107 Papua New Guinea 27, 32, 36, 39, 49n60 paramilitaries 74–5, 156–8, 166–7, 203 Paris 102, 106 Paris-Dayton Accords see Dayton Peace Accords partition: disqualiﬁed cases 38; EU and NATO security 12; Humpty Dumpty theory of ethnic conﬂict 25–9; lessons for Bosnia 39–43; overview 23–5, 46n13; a path forward 43–5; risks of 43 Partnership for Peace program (PfP): defense reform 163, 164, 169, 171n42; EU and NATO security 17; power-sharing or partition 40 Party of Democratic Action (SDA): clandestine political economy 72, 85; democratization 63, 64; media and security 142, 153n34; State Border Service 200 Patriot newspaper 149 PBS see Public Broadcasting System peace enforcement 29–31, 33, 34, 36–7 Peace Implementation Council (PIC): defense reform 156, 161, 162, 163, 169n4; democratization 69n13; EU accession 40; State Border Service 196 peace settlements: clandestine political economy 87; defense reform 155, 158,

161; democratization 51, 52, 54, 61, 65; environmental security 126; EU and NATO security 2, 9–10, 11, 12, 14, 17; media and security 139, 143, 144; mujahideen network 103, 105; police reform 173, 174, 185; power-sharing or partition 24–6, 28–30, 34–5, 39–40, 43–4 peacekeeping forces: clandestine political economy 90; defense reform 159, 163; democratization 54, 67; environmental security 126; EU and NATO security 8–9, 11, 12, 13; mujahideen network 104, 107, 110, 111, 113; police reform 181, 185; power-sharing or partition 38, 43, 44 Pecanin, Senad 146 people trafﬁcking see human trafﬁcking “Petersburg tasks” of WEU 8–9, 16 Petritsch, Wolfgang 197 Pezo, Adnan 110 PfP see Partnership for Peace program Philippines 27, 35, 37, 39, 48n45 PIC see Peace Implementation Council PMCs see private military companies police: clandestine political economy 75–8, 87, 88; defense reform 158, 160, 167; democratization 59, 60, 65; environmental security 131; EU and NATO security 9, 17; media and security 143; mujahideen network 102, 104, 107; power-sharing or partition 41, 42; State Border Service 193–5, 196–9, 201–3, 205, 206; see also police reform police reform 173–87; defense reform 166; EUPM/PRC 182–3; human rights 177–8; IPTF 174–6; lessons learned 184–7; minority returns 178–80; organized crime and corruption 180–1; overview 173–4; politics 176–7, 180, 181, 182, 186–7; power-sharing or partition 43; signiﬁcance 183–4; State Border Service 195, 204; see also police Police Restructuring Commission (PRC) 182, 183 politics: clandestine political economy 84; defense reform 158; elections 61–4; governance 56–8; media and security 140, 142–3, 147–51; police reform 176–7, 180, 181, 182, 186–7; power-sharing or partition 42; public

222

INDEX

conﬁdence 65; State Border Service 193, 194, 200, 204 pollution 122, 125–6, 134n20, 135n26, 136n33 population: clandestine political economy 80; democratization 51, 53–4, 68n8, 69n27; environmental security 122, 125; State Border Service 193 poverty reduction 127, 200 power-sharing 23–45; democratization 57, 65, 70n53; disqualiﬁed cases 35–9; ethnic civil wars 29–35; Humpty Dumpty theory of ethnic conﬂict 25–9; lessons for Bosnia 39–43; overview 23–5; a path forward 43–5 Prazina, Jusuf see “Juka” PRC see Police Restructuring Commission Presevo Valley 16, 24, 43 Princip, Gavrilo 6 prisons 75, 77, 80, 102 private military companies (PMCs) 167, 169, 172n54 private security companies (PSCs) 167, 172n53 privatization 85, 131, 157, 167, 169 professionalism 148–50, 182 propaganda 96, 139, 141, 149 prostitution 86, 95n113, 130, 180, 181, 186 PSCs see private security companies Public Broadcasting System (PBS) 145 public sector media 140, 144, 145 public security 59, 173, 174, 179, 185 Pusˇina, Jusuf 92n41 Al-Qaida: media and security 152n6; mujahideen network 96–100, 103, 106, 108–9, 111–12; paramilitaries 157 al-Qasimy, Shaykh Abu Talal (Talaat Fouad Qassem) 99, 104, 107, 108 radio stations 142, 144 Rahman, Shaykh Omar Abdel 97–9, 103, 104, 106, 108 Rapid Reaction Force (RRF) 7, 8, 11, 16, 17 Razˇnatovic, Zˇeljko see “Arkan” REC see Regional Environmental Center reconstruction: clandestine political economy 84, 89; democratization 52, 54, 55, 67; environmental security 122,

127; EU and NATO security 13, 15; State Border Service 194 “Red Berets” 88, 172n55 Red Cross 12, 14 reduction of armed forces 156, 157, 162, 164, 168 reforms: clandestine political economy 85, 88; democratization 51–2, 55–6, 66–7, 69n25; education 60–1, 62; elections 61–4; governance 56–8; power-sharing or partition 41, 44; public conﬁdence 64, 65; rule of law 58–60; State Border Service 199; see also defense reform; police reform refugees: clandestine political economy 85; environmental security 122, 125; EU and NATO security 12; police reform 178; power-sharing or partition 32, 35; State Border Service 200; UNHCR 125, 179, 200 regional autonomy: defense reform 164; lessons for Bosnia 40, 42, 43, 44; power-sharing or partition 26, 28, 29–35, 36–9, 46n14 Regional Environmental Center (REC) 127, 129, 136n37 Republika Srpska (RS): clandestine political economy 85, 86, 87; defense reform 155–6, 159–60, 163–6, 168–9; democratization 53–7, 63, 69n17; environmental security 127, 129, 135n27; media and security 150; police reform 177, 178, 179, 183, 187n8; power-sharing or partition 40–2, 44; State Border Service 194, 195, 197, 200 resource scarcity 121–4, 127, 128 Rifkin, Malcolm 11 Rijeka 104 rivers: border security 129, 130, 191; Brcˇko 53, 54; clandestine political economy 78, 79; environmental security 122, 124, 125, 127–30 roads infrastructure 125, 196 Robertson, Lord George 15 Robinson, Gertrude 140 Rome (Interim) Award 55 Rome Summit (NATO) 6, 8 Rothchild, D. 28 RRF see Rapid Reaction Force RS see Republika Srpska Rudic, Borka 145

223

INDEX

rule of law: clandestine political economy 86; democratization 58–60; police reform 174, 180, 185; State Border Service 203, 204, 205 Rumgay, Major Lindsay 105 Rumsfeld, Donald 17 Russia: clandestine political economy 83; defense reform 157; democratization 67; EU and NATO security 8, 11, 14; media and security 141, 152n7; power-sharing or partition 35, 36, 38; see also Soviet Union Rwanda 27, 125, 139, 151n3 SAA see Stabilization and Association Agreement SACEUR see Supreme Allied Commander Europe Sadat, Anwar 99, 100 Al-Sadda terrorist camp 109 Saddam Hussein 151n4, 152n7 safe havens 3, 4, 10, 11, 80 Saff Magazine 111, 112 St. Malo Joint Declaration on European Defense 7, 14–15, 18 Salaﬁst Group for Prayer and Combat (GSPC) 102 salaries 66–7, 152n11, 193, 197, 201, 203 Salibi, K. S. 32 sanctions 9, 10, 12, 71, 88, 193 Sandzak 24, 43 SAp see Stabilization and Association Process Sarajevo: aftermath of war 84, 86; airport 76–7, 79–80, 92n44, 197, 203; clandestine political economy 72, 91n34, 92n44; democratization 54; embassy attacks 111, 113; environmental security 123, 125, 131, 135n27; EU and NATO security 6, 10, 11, 12, 13; media 142, 144, 152n4; mujahideen network 111, 113; outbreak of war 73; persistence of war 75, 76–80, 81; police reform 175; power-sharing or partition 45; siege 13, 72, 75, 76–80, 91n34; State Border Service 197, 203; termination of war 82 Sarajevo Legal Seminars 164 Sase mine 124 Saudi Arabia 82, 97, 98, 110, 122 Sava River 53, 54, 124, 129, 130, 191 SBS see State Border Service

scarcity of resources 121, 122, 123, 124 Schengen Agreement 198, 202, 203, 204, 206, 207n14 schools 60, 61, 62, 144 SCMM see Standing Committee on Military Matters SDA see Party of Democratic Action SDB see Yugoslav State Security SDP see Social Democratic Party SDS see Serbian Democratic Party SEA see Single European Act Seaver, B. M. 32 security: in and of BiH 1–4, 192; Bosnian crisis 9–13; clandestine political economy 88, 89; defense reform 155–7, 159–62, 167, 169; deﬁnitions 1, 120, 121, 138; EU and NATO overview 6–7, 18–19; European security in 1991 7–9; managing 199–205; mujahideen network 96, 98; national security 120, 121–4, 126, 148; police reform 173, 176, 177, 179, 184, 185; power-sharing or partition 42; security spaces 193–5; State Border Service 191–2, 196–8, 200–4, 205–7; transformed EU and NATO security 13–18; see also environmental security; media and security “security jigsaw” 3, 174 Sell, Louis 175 September 11 (2001) attacks: defense reform 157; environmental security 121; global terrorism 2, 3; media and security 139, 146; mujahideen network 109 Serb Radio and Television (SRT) 144 Serb Republic see Republika Srpska (RS) Serbia: clandestine political economy 68, 74–5, 81–2, 88, 89; defense reform 157, 167, 168; democratization 53; environmental security 125, 127, 129, 134n20; EU and NATO security 2, 9, 14, 16; media and security 142, 147; mujahideen network 112; power-sharing or partition 23, 24, 43, 44; State Border Service 191, 195 Serbian Democratic Party (SDS): clandestine political economy 72, 73, 85; democratization 63, 64, 69n17; power-sharing or partition 41, 42; State Border Service 204 Serbs: clandestine political economy 72–5, 78, 82, 84, 87–8; defense reform 156,

224

INDEX

157, 162, 166, 167; democratization 53–5, 57–61, 64, 65–6; environmental security 129; EU and NATO security 6, 9, 10–12; media and security 142, 144, 147, 148; mujahideen network 99; persistence of war 76, 78, 79, 80, 81; police reform 180; power-sharing or partition 23, 24, 38, 42; State Border Service 195, 204 Seselj, Vojislav 157 SFOR see Stabilization Force Shaaban, Shaykh Anwar (Abu Abdelrahman al-Masri) 100–2, 104, 105, 108, 112 al-Shami, Abu Anas (Omar Yousef Jumah) 112 SHAPE see Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe Shiite Muslims 30, 104 Shura Council 99 Sˇiber, Stjepan 85 Sida see Swedish International Development Agency siege of Sarajevo: clandestine political economy 72, 75, 76–80, 91n34; environmental security 123, 125, 131; EU and NATO security 13 Silajdzic, Haris 63 Simatovic, Franko (“Frenki”) 73 Single European Act (SEA) 8 SIPA see State Investigation and Protection Agency Slavonia 11, 38 sleeper cell network 106, 109, 195 Slobodna Bosna newspaper 146 Slovenia: clandestine political economy 72, 82, 94n85; environmental security 129, 134n20; EU and NATO security 6, 9; power-sharing or partition 37, 38 Smith, Admiral Leighton 12 smuggling: aftermath of war 84, 86; clandestine political economy 71, 72, 89; Croatia 87; environmental security 128, 129; Kosovo 88; outbreak of war 73; persistence of war 75–80; police reform 180; State Border Service 191–3, 196, 202–4, 206; termination of war 82, 83, 84 Social Democratic Party (SDP) 64 soft-authoritarian media systems 140, 142, 149, 152n7 Solioz, Christophe 41

Somalia 27, 152n4 Soros Foundation 144 South Africa 29, 31, 34, 40, 152n7 Soviet Union: clandestine political economy 82, 86; environmental security 124; EU and NATO security 6, 9; media 140; mujahideen network 96; see also Russia Spain: EU and NATO security 9, 11, 12; power-sharing or partition 27, 32, 36, 39 Special Trafﬁcking Operations Program (STOP) 181 Sˇpegelj, Martin 82, 87 Srebrenica 11, 12, 13, 127, 146, 147 Sri Lanka 27, 203 SRT see Serb Radio and Television Stability Pact 129, 196 Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) 182–3, 199 Stabilization and Association Process (SAp) 15, 40, 199 Stabilization Force (SFOR): defense reform 162, 163, 164, 166, 168; EU and NATO security 2, 13, 16, 18; media and security 143; mujahideen network 110; police reform 175, 180; power-sharing or partition 42; State Border Service 198, 206 Standing Committee on Military Matters (SCMM) 159, 161, 163 State Border Service (SBS) 191–207; Bosnia geography 191–2; managing security 199–205; maneuvers 200–4; police reform 179, 183, 188n11; politics 199–200; role 196–9, 204–7; security spaces 194, 195 State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) 183, 195, 200, 201 Stojicˇic, Radovan (“Badzˇa”) 73 STOP see Special Trafﬁcking Operations Program Strong, Maurice 121 Sudan 27, 29, 31–3, 40, 82, 103 Sunni Muslims 30, 31, 32, 96 Supervisor see Brcˇko Supervisor Supplemental Award (1998) 55 Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) 13, 14 Supreme Defense Council 164 Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) 17, 18 al-Surayhi, Hassah abd-Rabbuh 97, 98

225

INDEX

sustainable development 124, 127, 132 Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) 57 Syria 32, 35, 36, 98, 111 T&EP see Train and Equip Program Taif agreement 38 Tajikstan 35, 37 Takﬁr waal Hijra 97 taxation 82, 84, 85, 86, 158 Taylor, M. 145 television stations 142–7, 153n26 Territorial Defense Force (TDF) 156, 169n5 terrorism: defense reform 157; environmental security 121, 130, 131; EU and NATO security 1, 2, 3, 4, 7; media and security 139, 146, 152n6; mujahideen network 96–101, 104, 106–9, 111–13; State Border Service 194, 195, 200, 203 Thakur, R. 122 Third World Relief Agency (TWRA) 82, 83 Thompson, Mark 141 Tihic, Sulejman 63 Tito, Josip Broz 124, 139, 140, 143 tourism 128, 129, 130 toxic waste 123, 130 trafﬁcking: clandestine political economy 73, 74, 84, 86, 88; police reform 180, 181, 182, 186; State Border Service 191–4, 196, 202, 203 Train and Equip Program (T&EP) 161–2 transport infrastructure 125, 196 “trees of Sarajevo” campaign 131 Tudjman, Franjo 83, 141, 142, 147 Tunisia 98, 100 tunnel, Sarajevo airport 79, 80 Turkey: clandestine political economy 82, 83; EU and NATO security 14, 16, 17, 18; State Border Service 203; Train and Equip Program 162 Tuzla region 54, 83, 124, 125 TWRA see Third World Relief Agency Udovicic, Radenko 147, 149, 150 Ugljen, Nedzad 194 Ukraine 78, 157 UN see United Nations Una River 124, 130 UNDP see United Nations Development Program

unemployment 102, 193 UNEP (United Nations Environment Program) 126 UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) 125, 179, 200 unions 140, 145 United Kingdom: EU and NATO security 7–9, 11–14, 16; media 152n7; North African mujahideen network 99, 103, 106; power-sharing or partition 47n31 United Nations (UN): clandestine political economy 71, 76–7, 79–80, 82–3, 91n34; defense reform 159, 163, 169; democratization 59; environmental security 125, 126, 127, 130; EU and NATO security 9, 10, 11, 14; North African mujahideen network 107, 112; police reform 173, 174, 181, 184, 185, 186; power-sharing or partition 24 United Nations Development Program (UNDP) 57, 176, 179 United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH) 173, 194, 197, 198 United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR): clandestine political economy 78, 79, 83; EU and NATO security 9, 10, 11 United Nations Security Council (UNSC) 9, 11, 14, 169n4, 177 United States: Bosnian crisis 9, 10, 11, 12, 13; clandestine political economy 81, 82, 83, 86; defense reform 159, 161, 162; democratization 66, 67; environmental security 121, 122, 125; EU and NATO security 6, 7, 8, 18, 19; media and security 139, 152n7; North African mujahideen network 99, 101, 103–6, 108–9; police reform 175; power-sharing or partition 23, 24, 40, 41, 43–5; State Border Service 204; transformed EU and NATO security 13, 14, 15, 16; USAID 27, 57, 58, 66, 144, 152n7 UNMIBH see United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina UNPROFOR see United Nations Protection Force UNSC see United Nations Security Council

226

INDEX

uranium 119, 125, 126 USAID (United States Agency for International Development) 27, 57, 58, 66, 144, 152n7 USSR see Soviet Union Vance-Owen Peace Plan 10, 24 Vanier, Lt. Cmdr. Yves 110 Vasiljkovic, Dragan (“Captain Dragan”) 157 Vaskovic, Slobodan 149 VF see Army of the Federation of BiH Vienna Document on CSBMs 160, 161 Vojvodina 24, 43 Vrbranja Bridge 11 Vreme 75 VRS see Army of Republika Srpska Vukovar 9 Vukovic, Slavi_a 201 war: aftermath 84–7, 89; democratization 52; environmental security 118, 119, 121–5, 130, 131; media and security 141–3, 147, 149, 150; outbreak of 9–13, 72–5; persistence of 75–81; powersharing or partition 24, 25, 26, 29, 31, 43; termination of 81–4; see also ethnic civil wars war crimes: defense reform 157, 165, 166, 169; EU and NATO security 2, 17; media 144; mujahideen network 112; police reform 177, 178, 179, 181; State Border Service 200, 204; tribunals 75, 88, 144, 165, 169, 171n42 “war tourism” 130 waste management 125, 126, 127, 130 water resources 53, 120, 122–4, 126–9 WDA see World Defense Almanac weapons see arms supplies “weekend-ﬁghters” 157 Western Balkans mujahideen network see mujahideen Western European Union (WEU): European security in 1991 7, 8, 9;

transformed EU and NATO security 13, 14, 15, 16 White Eagles 74, 157 women, trafﬁcking of 84, 86, 181, 193 World Bank 95n107, 127, 158, 168, 170n28, 194 World Defense Almanac (WDA) 157 World Food Program 79 World Health Organization 79 World Islamic Front Against Jews and Crusaders 106, 108 World Trade Center attacks 99, 104, 106, 109 Yousef, Mohammed Abdel-wahab see Abul-Harith al-Liby Yugoslav Communist League 140 Yugoslav National Army (JNA): clandestine political economy 73, 82, 87, 90n12; defense reform 156, 158, 169n5; democratization 53, 68n9; EU and NATO security 9, 10 Yugoslav State Security (SDB) 73, 75 Yugoslavia: clandestine political economy 72, 73, 82, 87; environmental security 120, 124, 129; EU and NATO security 8; media and security 139, 140–1; power-sharing or partition 23, 43, 44 Zagreb 54, 79 Zaire 27, 125, 167, 171n29 al-Zarqawi, Abu Musab 96, 112 al-Zawahiri, Dr. Ayman 97, 99, 108 “Zebras” 157 Zemun clan 88 Zenecka River 125 Zenica: clandestine political economy 83; environmental security 125; mujahideen network 103, 104, 105, 107, 111, 112 Zilic, Mehmed 107 Zimbabwe: ethnic conﬂict 27, 29, 31, 33; power-sharing or partition 40, 47n31, 47n33 Zvornik 53, 74, 179

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Bosnian Security after Dayton: New Perspectives (Contemporary Security Studies)