Reflections on the Balkan Wars Ten Years After the Break Up of Yugoslavia
Edited by Jeffrey S. Morton, R. Craig Nation, Paul Forage and Stefano Bianchini
Reflections on the Balkan Wars
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Reflections on the Balkan Wars: Ten Years After the Break Up of Yugoslavia Edited by
Jeffrey S. Morton, R. Craig Nation, Paul Forage, and Stefano Bianchini
REFLECTIONS ON THE BALKAN WARS
© Jeffrey S. Morton, 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published 2004 by PALGRAVE MACMILLANTM 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1–4039–6332–0 hardback Library of Congress Cataloging-in-publication Data Reflections on the Balkan wars : ten years after the break-up of Yugoslavia / edited by Jeffrey S. Morton… [et al.]. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN 1–4039–6332–0 1. Yugoslav War, 1991–1995—Congresses. 2. Yugoslavia—History— 1992–2003—Congresses. 3. Balkan Peninsula—History-20th century—Congresses. I. Morton, Jeffrey S. DR1313.R44 2004 949.703—dc21
2003054932
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: January, 2004 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.
Contents Preface Jeffrey S. Morton
vii
Foreword Rupert Smith
ix
Notes on Contributors
xiii Part One
1
Wars in the Balkans
The Civil War in Former Yugoslavia and the International Intervention Patricia Kollander
3
2
The Genocide Factor in the Yugoslav Wars of Dismemberment Henry R. Huttenbach
3
The Relationship Between the Dismemberment of Yugoslavia and European Integration Francesco Privitera
35
The Leaky Bucket: Ethnic Albanian Cross-Border Operations in the Balkans Lawrence E. Cline
55
4
5
Media and Communications Systems in the Balkan Conflicts Peter W. Reynolds Part Two
23
75
The International Law and Organization
6
The UN Response to the Balkan Wars Frances Pilch and Joseph Derdzinski
7
International Norms of Territorial Integrity and the Balkan Wars of the 1990s Mikulas Fabry
93
119
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The Balkan Wars and the International War Convention R. Craig Nation
9
Rethinking the Legal Nuances of Kosovo: Toward an Emerging Norm of Anticipatory Humanitarian Intervention? Christopher C. Joyner and Anthony Clark Arend Part Three
10
11
12
147
165
Reflections on the Balkan Wars
Managing Ethnic Conflict in Bosnia: International Solutions to Domestic Problems Patrice McMahon
189
From Korea to Kosovo: Matching Expectations with Reality for Modern Airpower in Limited Wars Conrad C. Crane
211
The Future of Western Engagement in the Balkans Stefano Bianchini and Paul Forage
Index
227
245
Preface Jeffrey S. Morton
W
ith the tenth anniversary of the onset of the war in Bosnia approaching, I was asked in the fall of 2001 to organize an international conference on the Balkans on behalf of the Peace Studies Program at Florida Atlantic University. Also sponsoring the conference were the United States Army War College and the University of Bologna. The conference was unique in that it attempted to bridge the academics who study the series of conflicts that raged in the Balkans during the 1990s with the military and diplomatic professionals who dealt directly with the situation on the ground. The two-day conference was organized around eight panels, with themes ranging from legal considerations of the Balkan wars to the perspectives of various military operators with battlefield experience. The conference welcomed a presentation by His Excellence Nikola Dimitrov, Macedonia’s Ambassador to the United States, and a keynote address by General Sir Rupert Smith, retired Deputy Supreme Allied Commander, Europe. The following individuals participated in the conference: Ron Adams, Army War College; Stefano Bianchini, University of Bologna; Lawrence Cline, American Military University; Conrad Crane, Army War College; Joseph L. Derdzinski, United States Air Force; His Excellence Nikola Dimitrov, Macedonia’s Ambassador to the United States; Mike Ellerbe, Army War College; Mikulas Fabry, University of British Columbia; Paul Forage, Florida Atlantic University; Robert Gard, US Army (retired); Henry Huttenbach, City College of New York; Christopher Joyner, Georgetown University; Patricia Kollander, Florida Atlantic University; Ray Millen, Army War College; Noemi Marin, Florida Atlantic University; Patrice C. McMahon, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Jeffrey S. Morton, Florida Atlantic University; Craig Nation, Army War College;
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Fran Philch, United States Air Force Academy; Francesco Privitera, University of Bologna; Tim Reese, Army War College; Peter Reynolds, SHAPE; John Rovegno, Army War College; Pirityi Sandor, Hungarian Assoc. for Military Science & Security; General Sir Rupert Smith, DSACEUR (retired); Rick Swengros, Army War College. This book is the product of the conference, with select papers chosen for publication. In editing this book, my co-editors and I would like to thank not only the above for their contributions to the conference but also some of the many people who made that event and this manuscript possible, including the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts & Letters, the Schmidt Foundation, Felipe Godoy, Zella Linn,Victoria Thur, Palgrave Press reviewers, and the editorial staff at Palgrave Macmillan.
Foreword Rupert Smith
I
am delighted to be asked to write the foreword to this book. This collection of essays is in part at least a record of a most interesting and informative conference held at the Florida Atlantic University in January 2002 in which I took part. We endeavored to view the experience of the various interventions into the Balkans in the round and to draw conclusions that might be of value in the future. As one with direct professional involvement in these events I found the wide range of contributions when taken together gave an excellent context against which to examine the particular issues. In addition, as a Briton, I found the predominantly transatlantic viewpoint refreshing and clearheaded. I commend this volume to both the academic and the more general reader seeking an understanding of this complex and perplexing part of Europe and the events of the past decade. I commend it also as a series of case studies to those who might consider interventions in the affairs of others; each intervention of the series is built on the mistakes of the past, a series that has yet to be completed. There are many general lessons to be drawn from the body of this international experience, lessons that are applicable to other parts of the world and other circumstances. As one who has been involved in these events and conducted intervention operations, I can vouch for our collective need to learn how to do these things better. It is important to do this for despite the many mistakes and delays the interventions have stopped the fighting, the killing and ethnic cleansing has ceased, hunger and deprivation are not endemic, and elected governments are in power. The presence of the international military gives a sense of security to the peoples of the Balkans, such that they are not so frightened of each other that they fight. The problem that faces us all is how to develop the civil measures,
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locally and regionally, so that foreign military forces do not have to provide this sense of security. Frequently our interventions are founded in the first instance on a flawed perception of the situation. Concepts, such as that of the nationstate, that have served to order our understanding in the past have been of questionable value in the analysis of the Balkan Question. The events described in the opening chapter, “The Civil War in Former Yugoslavia and the International Intervention,” recording the surprised reaction of European leaders in particular, illustrates the limited understanding of those who sought to intervene. The author of chapter 2, “The Genocide Factor in the Yugoslavian Wars of Dismemberment,” addresses the aims of those engaged initially in the various conflicts, highlighting: the wide range of objectives, the different levels of violence, and the targets of that violence. This flawed perception is carried on into the decisions as to what action to take. The tendency to intervene on a basis limited by a state boundary, however arbitrary, as in Kosovo, in what is essentially a regional matter is well illustrated in chapter 4, “The Leaky Bucket: Ethnic Albanian Cross-border Operations in the Balkans.” In many cases we perceive the unfolding crisis through the eyes and lenses of the media. This is the case for combatants and onlookers alike. All parties to the conflict, including those intervening, endeavor to a greater or lesser degree to play to their audience and to influence the media. The part this tendency has had in the Balkans is described in chapter 5, “Media and Communication Systems in the Balkan Conflicts.” Assumptions as to the role and purpose of major international organizations, such as the UN, NATO, and the EU, were also challenged and found to be incorrect in the post–Cold War Balkans. These false assumptions also led to misunderstandings more often than not over what could be achieved in the circumstances. The EU was unable to meet its expectations of itself, as is described in chapter 3, “The Relationship between the Dismemberment of Yugoslavia and European Integration,” and the UN despite many wide-ranging efforts was also seen to have failed to achieve its promise. The UN’s worthy and often unrecognized endeavors are explained in chapter 6, “The UN Response to the Balkan Wars.” Finally, NATO was called on to act; to act in circumstances for which it had never been intended, for an objective short of territorial defense, and in a way that had not been tried before. If further evidence is required to support the argument that our perceptions have been founded on concepts that are increasingly invalid then an examination of international law should provide it. Chapter 7,
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“International Norms of Territorial Integrity and the Balkan Wars of the 1990s,” shows the effect on the decision-makers of the law or norms in these cases. Chapter 8, “The Balkan Wars and the International War Convention,” charts the progress of the extension of the Convention and in particular the implications for the trial of Miloˇsevi´c currently in progress. Lastly, and most significantly in the light of the USA’s new National Security Strategy, chapter 9, “Rethinking the Legal Nuances of Kosovo: Toward an Emerging Norm of Anticipatory Humanitarian Intervention?” considers the legality of the NATO and US actions. The chapter argues that a precedent may have been established for such interventions and that if this is so, it lists and explains the criteria for such interventions in the future to be legitimate. The final part of the volume covers three subjects that I have touched on already. I wrote early in this piece that the international interventions into the Balkans despite their difficulties have succeeded in improving the situation for the peoples of that unfortunate region. Chapter 10, “Managing Ethnic Conflict in Bosnia: International Solutions to Domestic Problems,” covers the intervention in Bosnia and apart from explaining the successes it shows why these external initiatives reach their limit, and thus the need to grow domestic solutions so as to leave an enduring condition of peace and prosperity. The second subject was alluded to when discussing the involvement of NATO. When I wrote that NATO had intervened in a way that had not been used before, I was referring to the operations over Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999. Chapter 11, “From Korea to Kosovo: Matching Expectations with Reality for Modern Airpower in Limited Wars,” offers a commentary on this use of airpower in Kosovo and gives a useful if particular example of the difficulties of deciding the utility of military force in complex political circumstances. Circumstances where the objectives are not the simple ones of interstate war, and the use of military force is not itself expected to be decisive. Circumstances where the conflict is being conducted amongst the people and the targets have to be struck with the minimum risk of collateral damage. Finally, in chapter 12,“The Future of Western Engagements in the Balkans,” lessons are drawn from the decade of Balkan interventions and compared with the actuality of the intervention in Macedonia in 2001. The chapter concludes with some more general observations concerning the future of such operations. A brief survey of the contents of this book will show its general relevance to anyone seeking an understanding of current events let alone those of the Balkans in the last ten or so years. During the conference,
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where the book was conceived, and with the events of 9/11 fresh in our minds we constantly found ourselves using the past to argue whether or not some measure, either in use or being proposed, would show the desired result in The War on Terrorism. Always accepting that memory is partial, I recall that a year ago those drawing on our collective Balkan experiences predicted many of the issues of today. To this end if no other I commend this book.
Notes on Contributors
ANTHONY CLARK AREND is Professor in the Department of Government and the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is Co-Director of the Institute for International Law and Politics at Georgetown. His most recent book, Legal Rules and International Society, was published in 1999 by Oxford University Press. Dr. Arend is Vice President of the Georgetown University Faculty Senate for the Main Campus and served as Chair of the Main Campus Executive Faculty at Georgetown from 1997 to 2001. In that capacity, he was a member of the Main Campus Council of Deans. STEFANO BIANCHINI is Director of the Institute of East Central and Balkan Europe and a professor of East European politics at the University of Bologna. He has published six books on Yugoslavia and Balkan nationalisms of the twentieth century and many articles in numerous languages. His has recently co-edited a book in English with Paul Shoup and George Schöpflin Post-Communist Transition as a European Problem (Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2002). L AWRENCE E. CLINE is Professor of national security studies at American Military University, where he specializes in peace operations, low intensity conflict, and intelligence. He is a retired US Army Military Intelligence officer. CONRAD C. CRANE is Director of the US Army Military History Institute and holds the General Douglas MacArthur Chair of Research at the US Army War College. He is the author of Bombs, Cities, and Civilians: American Airpower Strategy in World War II and American Airpower Strategy in Korea, 1950–1953, both published by the University Press of Kansas. He is a 1974 graduate of the US Military Academy who earned his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1990. He retired from the Army in 2000 after 26 years of active duty, the last nine as Professor of History at USMA.
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JOSEPH DERDZINSKI is a US Air Force officer currently assigned to the University of Denver’s Graduate School of International Studies, where he is a Ph.D. candidate. He has spent most of his career as a special agent in the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations, with assignments in Germany and the United Kingdom. He was also in the first US military contingent during NATO’s implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement. His thesis work at the University of Texas focused on the role of the military in the dissolution of Yugoslavia. MIKULAS FABRY is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellow and a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of British Columbia. The topic of his dissertation is international society and the practice of recognition of new states in the era of national self-determination. PAUL FORAGE is Assistant Professor of History at Florida Atlantic University. A China specialist with interests in military history, international security, and peacekeeping operations, his most recent article, “The Battle for Mount Pastrik,” is concerned with the use of airpower in support of ground operations during the war in Kosovo. In 1999, Professor Forage established the Peace and Humanitarian Service Program at Florida Atlantic University, a program that he directed until 2003. HENRY R. HUTTENBACH, is Professor of European History at The City College of New York. He is the founder/editor of The Genocide Forum and founder/editor of the Journal of Genocide Research. Professor Huttenbach is also Director of M.A. Studies in History. CHRISTOPHER C. JOYNER is Professor of International Law in the Department of Government and School of Foreign Service and CoDirector of the Institute of International Law and Politics at Georgetown University. From 1989 to 1994, he directed the American Society of International Law’s Project on the United Nations and the International Legal Order, and is co-editor of United Nations Legal Order (Cambridge University Press, 1995) and editor of The United Nations and International Law (Cambridge University Press, 1997). Formerly Vice Chair of the Governing Council of the Academic Council on the United Nations (ACUNS), twice on the ASIL Executive Council, and three times past Chair of the International Law Section of the International Studies Association, he is also a member of the International Law Association’s Committee on the Law of the Sea. He has written more than 300 articles in law reviews and published 12 books. His most recent publication, International Law in the 21st
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Century: Legal Rules for Global Goverance, will be published next year (Rowman & Littlefield). PATRICIA KOLLANDER is Associate Professor of History at Florida Atlantic University. Her areas of expertise include the history of modern Germany and European diplomatic history in the ninteenth and twentieth centuries. Dr. Kollander is the author of Frederick III: Germany’s Liberal Emperor, and has published articles in the Historian and German History. PATRICE MCMAHON is Assistant Professor of political science at the University of Nebraska. She is the co-editor of International Human Rights and Diversity: Area Studies Revisited, and is writing a book on transnationalism and the management of ethnic conflict in Central Europe. JEFFREY S. MORTON is Associate Professor of International Law & Politics in the Department of Political Science and Director of Peace Studies (2003–) at Florida Atlantic University. He is the author of The International Law Commission of the United Nations (University of South Carolina Press, 2000) and journal articles that have appeared, among others, in the Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Genocide Research, International Interactions, and Journal of International and Comparative Law. R. CRAIG NATION is Professor of Strategy and Director of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the US Army War College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He is the author of a forthcoming history of the Yugoslav conflict entitled War in the Balkans, 1991–2002. FRANCES PILCH is Associate Professor of Political Science at the United States Air Force Academy. She is the author of “The Crime of Rape in International Law,” in the USAFA Journal of Legal Studies, and specializes in issues concerning the legal interpretation of sexual violence in international and internal conflict. PETER W. REYNOLDS is a retired British Military Officer and currently Executive Director of the Institute for Emergency Mental Health Services. He also lectures on Psychological Operations and the Media, as well as NATO and EU security policies. RUPERT SMITH served as Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe (DSACEUR) from 1998 until 2002. Before becoming DSACEUR he was the General Officer Commanding Northern Ireland from 1996 until 1998 and commanded UNPROFOR in Bosnia–Herzegovina in 1995. General Sir Rupert Smith also served in the Persian Gulf War, commanding the 1st Armoured Division.
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PART ONE
Wars in the Balkans
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CHAPTER 1
The Civil War in Former Yugoslavia and the International Intervention Patricia Kollander
Introduction
T
he end of the Cold War and the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe gave hope for a new era of peace and prosperity. The opposite occurred in Yugoslavia, which disintegrated in the wake of a bitter civil war between its subject nationalities. The conflict bewildered most international leaders, who had labored under the assumption that the nationalities of Yugoslavia had achieved a level of integration under communist President Josip Broz Tito, who ruled the country from 1945 to 1980. But the rapid escalation of the war and the well-publicized atrocities that accompanied the struggle made it quite clear that integration had been superficial at best. This chapter will discuss the international intervention in the civil war after hostilities between the Serbs and the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) on the one hand, and the Slovenes, Croats, and Bosnian Muslims on the other erupted. The period considered is the phase prior to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervention in Kosovo, when animosities amongst the Yugoslav parties were most intense. In addition, an attempt will be made to show how problematic was the coexistence of nationality groups after the creation of the first Yugoslavia in 1918, and how deep was the impact of the agitation of radical Serb nationalists in the late 1980s, which was echoed in other parts of the country.
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The First Yugoslavia, 1918–1941 The rapid disintegration of Yugoslavia—and the horrible slaughter that accompanied it—took many by surprise. Groping for an explanation, some pundits were quick to point out that the war was caused by the “ancient hatreds” that the various nationality groups bore toward one another. This is inaccurate, because the various nationality groups of former Yugoslavia did not coexist in ancient times at all; they were only joined together after the creation of the Yugoslav kingdom—the socalled “first Yugoslavia”—in 1918. Prior to 1918, only Serbia and Montenegro were independent kingdoms; the other nationality groups—the Slovenes, Croats, Bosnian Muslims and Macedonians, as well as Serbs outside Serbia proper—were under the suzerainty of the Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian empires. During the nineteenth century, Croat, Slovene, and Serb intellectuals promoted the unification of their respective nationality groups because their peoples spoke a similar language and came from the same basic ethnic stock. Thanks to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires in World War I, and the triumph of the principle of national self-determination in its wake, the victors in World War I supported the creation of a new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. The kingdom came into existence in December of 1918. Led by the Serbian monarchy, it brought together for the first time Serbia (including the provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina), Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia–Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Macedonia. But those who supported and celebrated the creation of the kingdom failed to take into consideration the fact that its incumbent nationality groups had never enjoyed a common existence, and had different traditions. There were significant religious differences as well. The people of Croatia and Slovenia were mostly Roman Catholics. Serbians belonged to the Orthodox Church. Bosnia was divided between Muslims, Orthodox Serbs, Croatian Catholics, and Jews. Compounding these differences was the fact that Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia (at the time referred to as southern Serbia), and Bosnia had substantial ethnic minorities living within their respective borders. Problems associated with these differences arose in the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes from the very beginning. The Serbian radicals in Belgrade, who claimed to represent the largest national group (six million) in the kingdom, wanted to build a strong central government. This caused problems with other nationality groups who feared Serbian domination. As early as the 1920s, Croatian leaders complained
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that the extension of the Serbian constitution of 1903 to the rest of the country failed to respect the rights of non-Serbs. The Croatian Peasant Party initially demanded either a republic or some kind of federal organization. Later, its leaders accepted the monarchy and, along with the Slovenes, the democratic Serbs (mainly Serbs outside Serbia), and Bosnian Muslims, inclined toward autonomy, but divisions repeatedly cut through political parties, leaving tension at a high level. When compromise on state organization appeared to be impossible, the king of Serbia suspended the constitution and convened a dictatorship in 1929. He also renamed the country as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in an effort to demonstrate the appearance of some sort of union between the nationalities, which in fact did not exist. During the next decade, the Yugoslav government attempted to centralize Yugoslavia by unpopular and repressive measures. This in turn fueled the resentment of anti-Serb radical fringe groups such as the Croatian Ustashe, which masterminded the assassination of King Alexander of Yugoslavia in 1934. After this violent act, political leaders in Croatia and Serbia slowly saw their way clear to compromise. The Sporazum or Compromise of 1939 made possible a partially self-governing Croatia. World War II and Civil War in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945 But before the Sporazum could be truly tested as means for Serb–Croat reconciliation, Yugoslavia was rent asunder by the German invasion of 1941. Hitler and his allies carved out portions of the country for themselves, and a pro-Nazi regime was installed in Serbia under General Milan Nedi´c. The new puppet leader soon implemented Hitler’s antiSemitic policies, and Belgrade was proudly proclaimed as the first Jewfree or Judenfrei city under Hitler’s aegis. The radical Croat Ustashe movement, in cooperation with the Nazi government, founded the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). The Ustashe persecuted Serbs and Jews alike; untold thousands were murdered at the concentration camp of Jasenovac.1 Soon anti-Nazi organizations sprang up in Yugoslavia, including— but for a few months only—the royalist Serb Chetniks under Dragoljub Mihailovi´c, and the communists led by former metalworker of Croat–Slovene extraction, Josip Broz Tito. In fact, since autumn 1941, his partisans had faced tremendous opposition; they fought not only the Italians and Germans, but also the Croat Ustashe, Chetniks, and Serbian fascists. Historian Carole Rogel summed up the chaos and bloodshed of
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the period: “National groups fought one another, members of the same group fought among themselves, and even members of the same family found themselves on opposing sides . . . If the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia has historic roots, it is in this World War II period of political, ethnic and religious brutality.” 2 Communist Yugoslavia, 1941–1991 Tito triumphed over the noncommunist forces in 1945, and created a new political entity, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), consisting of six republics, and two autonomous provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina. From the start, Tito was committed to dismantling nationalism, which he saw as a destabilizing force in his country. Tito at first adopted a policy of toleration toward the various nationality groups in the hope that in time, it would lead national groups to embrace communism over nationalism. But when mild tolerance failed to quell nationalist rumblings, Tito had nationalist agitators arrested, regardless of ethnic origin. Nationalist Serbs found Tito’s antinationalist policies hard to take, particularly where Kosovo was concerned. They were convinced that it was a part of Serbia and therefore had no business existing apart from it. But although Kosovo had indeed been a part of Serbia in medieval times, by the twentieth century it was 90 percent Albanian and only 10 percent Serb. The disparity made no difference to ardent Serb nationalists, who insisted that Kosovo had to be absorbed into Serbia. The Albanian majority of Kosovo understandably resented nationalist activities of the Serbs and favored union with Albania. Though Tito hounded both Serb and Albanian nationalists in Kosovo in an effort to put an end to the strife between the two groups, revolts in favor of union with Albania broke out three times during Tito’s tenure and twice thereafter. Outside Kosovo, however, Tito’s antinationalism program did bring a measure of peace to a majority of the Yugoslavs; in several regions of the country, Serbs, Croats, and Muslims lived side by side in harmony. Tito also endeared himself to his people by casting aside his allegiance to the Soviet Union in 1948 and fostering trade with the West. His policies bore fruit: during the 1960s and 1970s, Yugoslavia achieved a level of prosperity unknown behind the Iron Curtain. It also emerged as a major tourist destination, particularly for Germans and Italians, and its policy of workers’ self-management earned kudos among intellectuals in the West. In the late 1970s, however, Tito’s heath began to fail, and many began to question whether his system would survive him. Within days
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after Tito’s death in 1980, pundits predicted that the republic could unravel. A correspondent from Time magazine wrote: The serious threat to Yugoslavia is likely to be more internal than external. The country is a patchwork of six nationalistic republics plus two so-called autonomous provinces that have their own languages, religions and cultures . . . The nation’s uneven economy could work either for or against stability. . . . A severe economic downturn could aggravate the glaring inequities and consequent animosities between the developed northern republics like Slovenia and hinterlands like Kosovo.3
These statements proved to be prophetic. In the years following Tito’s death, Serb nationalists worked hard to reestablish the power that Serbia had exercised prior to World War II. These efforts made the other nationalities anxious about the possible emergence of a Greater Serbia. In addition, the government, now led by a system of rotating presidencies, was unable to redress not only rising national tensions but also the economic disparities between industrialized areas (mainly concentrated in Croatia, Slovenia, and northern Serbia) and underdeveloped regions. The government encouraged republics to pursue foreign loans to redress economic concerns, but the loans were unsupervised. As a result, Yugoslavia became one of the most heavily indebted states in Europe. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) requested that the government revamp its economic structure as prerequisite for future loans, but this request met with resistance from more conservative government politicians in Belgrade. These severe economic problems were compounded by the dramatic increase in nationalist agitation, which only increased when communism faltered in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s. When he came to power in 1985, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev proclaimed the relatively liberal policies of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness) in the hope that good, reformminded communists would emerge and strengthen the Soviet Union. Instead, the policies unleashed criticism that his regime could not tolerate. In the end, the attempt to reform communism led to its undoing as nationalist forces emerged triumphant in a significant part of the Soviet bloc and beyond to include Yugoslavia. Indeed, what the pundits discussing the fate of Yugoslavia in the wake of Tito’s death could not have envisioned was a Soviet collapse parallel to a Yugoslav collapse, each influencing the other. By the end of the 1980s, an increasing number of communist officials and some leaders in the six constituent
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Yugoslav republics embraced nationalism and began to make a case for nationalist expansion at the expense of the other republics. The Collapse of Community Yugoslavia, 1990–1991 Foremost among these leaders in Serbia was former businessman Slobodan Miloˇsevi´c, who rose to power as a member of the League of Communists during the 1980s. Like many Serbs, Miloˇsevi´c was inspired by a seminal 1986 memorandum from the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. The 74-page memorandum, which became a bible for Serb nationalists, argued that Tito’s policies had weakened Serbia economically and politically, discriminated against Serbs in Kosovo, Croatia, and Bosnia, and that the time had come for Serbs to restore their national and cultural uniqueness by considering alternatives to Yugoslavia. Miloˇsevi´c exploited the memorandum and the Kosovo issue to achieve political glory. A turning point in his political career came in 1987, when he was sent to Kosovo to calm down Serbs who charged Kosovo Albanian provincial government with anti-Serb discrimination. Instead of refuting the charges, Miloˇsevi´c assured the Serb minority that the Albanian majority had no right to challenge Serb overlordship in Kosovo. He added that the Serb government would never allow its minority in Kosovo to be beaten. The vehemently nationalistic speech gained national attention, and Miloˇsevi´c soon became known as an architect for the creation of a greater Serbia that would include the complete absorption of Kosovo. Miloˇsevi´c was as good as his word. Within a year of his vitriolic speech, he had full control over the League of Communists in Serbia, and had replaced party leaders in Serbia, Kosovo, and Vojvodina with his own supporters. In 1989, Miloˇsevi´c became president of Serbia, and he and his supporters soon ended the autonomy of Kosovo. At the Yugoslav communist congress held in Belgrade in 1990, he also made it clear that he would not tolerate either the confederalization of the party or criticism toward its policy in Kosovo, in spite of the fact that he had to accept the end of the communist monopoly of power. Dissatisfied, the Slovene delegation walked out of the congress, followed by the Croat and the other delegations. As a result, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia was irreparably compromised. Each of the republics began to chart its own political course, and the federal structure of Yugoslavia gradually ceased to function completely. Elections were held in each of the republics in 1990. In most cases, communists who had recently converted to nationalism rode the wave to victory. The winner in Croat elections was the nationalist Croatian
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Democratic Union (HDZ) led by Franjo Tudjman, a former communist general who was inclined to create a Great Croatia mainly at the expense of Bosnia. Former communist Milan Kuˇcan was elected president of Slovenia, while a government of anticommunist reformers and nationalists won the elections. Miloˇsevi´c, leading Serbia’s newly constituted Socialist Party, won amid rumors of election fraud. Muslim intellectual Alija Izetbegovi´c, leader of the Muslim Party of Democratic Action, came to power in Bosnia–Herzegovina at the end of the year along with the Serb and Croat nationalist parties. Election campaigns in Serbia, Slovenia, and Croatia were highlighted by strong nationalist rhetoric, which worked to poison relations between the republics. In Slovenia, meetings were punctuated by the traditional chant, “Hang Serbs from willow trees!” In Croatia, similar slogans were uttered. In addition, Tudjman’s campaign slogan, “a Croatia for Croatians only,” made the Serbs of Croatia understandably anxious. While Croats and Slovenes adopted an offensive posture, Miloˇsevi´c insisted that Serbia was on the defensive and sought to identify Serbia with Yugoslavia. He accused Tudjman of resuscitating the spirit of the Ustashe era. Tudjman, in turn, unwittingly played into Miloˇsevi´c’s hands by publicly downplaying the abuses of the Ustashe during World War II.4 While playing the role of Serbs as victims in public, in private Miloˇsevi´c began to prepare for an offensive struggle to create a Greater Serbia. In June of 1990, he told one of his aides that he wanted Slovenia and Croatia out of the federation, but wished to keep Serb-populated areas of Croatia in the federation. He knew that Croatia would probably resist revision of its boundaries. But Serbia was prepared for such a contingency. The Serb-dominated JNA, he said, would “defend the right of those who wished to remain” together.5 There may have been hope for the survival of the Yugoslav union had Serbia agreed to Croat and Slovene requests to transform Yugoslavia into a looser confederation. The Bosnian Muslims were also interested. Since Bosnia–Herzegovina was almost evenly split between Serbs, Croats, and Muslims, Izetbegovi´c promoted confederation as a favorable alternative to the collapse of the Yugoslav state. Izetbegovi´c’s counterpart in Macedonia, Kiro Gligorov, shared this view in light of the fact that Albanians constituted at least 21 percent of the population of Macedonia.6 But Miloˇsevi´c and other proponents of a Greater Serbia were not interested. On one hand, Miloˇsevi´c’s next major move was to try to wrest control over the federal government before the other republics had a chance to break away. On the other, Miloˇsevi´c met both Kuˇcan and Tudjman separately, in order to find an agreement on the Yugoslav
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partition. With the former an agreement was roughly achieved, while with the latter it was impossible to decide how to divide Bosnia. Meanwhile, Miloˇsevi´c managed to convince four representatives of the six republics and the two autonomous regions to block the succession of a Croat to the presidency of Yugoslavia, consequently hindering the control of the presidency over the army. As if these developments were not ominous enough, leaders of the other republics watched warily how Miloˇsevi´c was taking advantage of the fact that around 70 percent of the officer corps of JNA was Serb or Montenegrin, and was increasingly isolating pro-Yugoslav leaders of the JNA.7 In turn, Slovenia and Croatia started to transform their Territorial Defense Forces (the existing national guard) into their own armies, the former being more rapid and successful in this operation than the latter. It also became clear to non-Serb leaders that Miloˇsevi´c would seize any available opportunity to end the autonomy of the other republics by force. In the end, as announced in December 1990, Slovenia—followed by an unprepared Croatia—withdrew from the Yugoslav federation and declared independence in June of 1991. The Outbreak of Civil War, 1991 The JNA moved first against Slovenia and Croatia during the summer of 1991. Since Slovenia did not have a sizeable Serb minority and its national guard was well prepared for the assault by the JNA, Miloˇsevi´c was not interested in supporting a war in Slovenia, so that fighting was halted after only ten days of hostilities. A total of 50 lives was lost. By October, Slovenia was fully independent and at peace. The same could not be said for Croatia, since 12 percent of its population was of Serb extraction. Fighting raged there during the latter half of 1991. The JNA concentrated its forces on the Adriatic resort city of Dubrovnik, and on two cities with large populations on the eastern border, Osijek and Vukovar. The war was costly. In the city of Vukovar alone, 2,300 people perished.8 According to Tudjman’s propaganda, the war was being fought to prevent Croatia from succumbing to Serb hegemony. Miloˇsevi´c countered that the Serb-dominated JNA was “defending a defenseless Serb people against the reemergence of Croat fascism.”9 Ten thousand lives were sacrificed to this propaganda, and a total of one million Croats and Serbs had become refugees. By the end of the year, the Serbs controlled one-third of the country. The European Community (EC) which tried but failed to prevent the breakup of the country on the eve of the war, was equally incapable of
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brokering peace between Serbia and Croatia. Over a dozen cease-fires were arranged by the EC, only to be broken shortly after their conclusion. Economic sanctions were imposed against Serbia in 1991 and 1992, but it would take time before their impact could be felt. In the fall of 1992, the United Nations (UN) stepped in and finally brokered a truce to be monitored by some 14,000 UN troops (known as the UN Protection Force or UNPROFOR). The terms were appealing to both sides: Miloˇsevi´c was satisfied with one-third of Croatia, and happy to see his gains monitored by the UN. The Croats, for their part, welcomed the cease-fire because it bought them time to rebuild their military forces in preparation for a counteroffensive against Serbia.10 The Destruction of Bosnia, 1991–1994 The next flashpoint in the civil war was Bosnia–Herzegovina, the most diverse of the six Yugoslav republics. No single nationality group was in the majority: of the Bosnian population of 4.4 million, Bosnian Muslims constituted 43.7 percent of the population, Serbs constituted 31.4 percent, Croats constituted 17.3 percent. When Bosnia held elections, the parties that came to the forefront corresponded in size and in nationality to Bosnia’s diverse population. Izetbegovi´c’s Muslim Party of Democratic Action was the largest party, followed by the Serbian Democratic Party, led by former psychiatrist Radovan Karadˇzi´c, and the HDZ.11 If Bosnia was to stay together, the three parties had to agree to this. But by 1991, agreement became increasingly impossible as Bosnian Serbs and Croats were actively supporting, along with nationalist leaders in Serbia and Croatia proper, the prospect of union with the “mother country.” In September of 1991, Miloˇsevi´c told Bosnian Serb leader Karadˇzi´c, “You’ll get everything, don’t worry. We are the strongest . . . As long as we have the army, nobody can do anything to us.”12 Amid growing separatist sentiments in his country, Izetbegovi´c was faced with an ominous choice: if Bosnia opted to stay in the Yugoslav union, it would be most certainly overrun by the Serbs; the status of Bosnia would be similar to that of Kosovo. If Bosnia withdrew from the union and declared independence, war between Bosnian Serbs favoring union with Belgrade, and the Bosnian Muslims would be inevitable. Izetbegovi´c opted for the latter course. In early March of 1992, the Bosnian Muslims and Croats voted for independence overwhelmingly. Meanwhile, Macedonia had held a referendum in September 1991 and the independence option was backed both by Slavic Macedonian and
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the Albanian population. Yugoslavia, which once had six republics, now had only two, Serbia and Montenegro. A few weeks before the Bosnian referendum, in January 1992 the Bosnian Serbs declared the Serb Republic of Bosnia–Herzegovina, a political entity designed to bring Bosnia in as close a communion with Serbia as possible, to the detriment of other nationality groups in the republic. At the beginning of April, both sides were at war. In the opening months of the conflict, anti-Serb forces were weak; their armies numbered 50,000 and were ill trained and ill equipped. Additional military help was not forthcoming; in an illfated effort to contain the scope of the war, the UN not only imposed sanctions on Serbia but also forbade sales of arms to Bosnia and Croatia. The tactic misfired horribly: the military capacity of the 80,000-strong Bosnian Serb contingent, which was well supplied by the JNA, was unaffected by the economic sanctions, but the Bosnian Muslims were made immediately vulnerable by the arms embargo. The Bosnian Serbs aimed to conquer a stretch of land in eastern and northern Bosnia that would give them direct linkage to Serbia. Fighting was particularly fierce in Sarajevo, where Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadˇzi´c wished to establish his new capital.13 In the process of securing these territories, the Bosnian Serbs were intent on “Serbianizing” them via systematic removal of the non-Serbian population. Hence these territories would be “ethnically cleansed” of non-Serbs. The policy was systematic and brutal. It was endorsed by Miloˇsevi´c and Karadˇzi´c, and executed by the Bosnian general, Ratko Mladi´c. Residents of Muslim villages were the first targets of the policy. They were hounded out of their villages via a program of harassment and intimidation. Those who stayed behind were often tortured, raped, and ultimately murdered. Since the program worked well in the countryside, the Bosnian Serbs began to use it in larger Bosnian towns and cities by the fall of 1992. Outnumbered and outgunned, Izetbegovi´c begged the international community for help. The UN responded by recognizing Bosnia’s independence, and by imposing additional economic sanctions on Yugoslavia, which supplied Izetbegovi´c’s enemies. In addition, 16,000 UNPROFOR troops were dispatched to Bosnia. These actions did little to solve Izetbegovi´c’s immediate problem, which was a lack of firepower. The UNPROFOR troops were not authorized to use weapons even to defend themselves. To make matters worse, the ban on arms sales to Bosnia and Croatia was upheld, leaving the Bosnians practically defenseless.14 As UN and EC delegates droned on, the Bosnia Serbs and their allies in the JNA continued their march on Bosnia unimpeded. Their
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treatment of Bosnian civilians was horrendous as the policy of “ethnic cleansing” was applied without scruple. During the summer of 1992, the International Red Cross received reports of atrocities committed by Serbs against Bosnian Muslim prisoners of war at camps in Omarska, Trnopolje, and Manjaca. When the Red Cross gained access to the camps, they learned that rumors of Serb atrocities bore out in fact. Reports of the rape of Muslim women were also confirmed. The Western media gained access to the camps, and soon pictures of emaciated Muslims appeared on the front pages of leading publications in the Western world. Many pundits began drawing parallels between the Holocaust and the death camps of Bosnia.15 By the fall of 1992, sentiments ran high against the Bosnian Serbs who perpetrated these acts and their ally, Slobodan Miloˇsevi´c. Measures were undertaken in an effort to contain the conflict, but they were largely ineffectual. The creation of a permanent conference at Geneva on Bosnia, the establishment of an international court to try war criminals, the UN designation of six cities within Bosnia (Sarajevo, Biha´c, Goraˇzde, ˇ Srebrenica, Tuzla, and Zepa) as “safe havens,” the dispatch of 6,000 UN forces to process war prisoners—all did nothing to end the war in general or the policy of ethnic cleansing in particular. The UN troops were not authorized to fight the Bosnian Serbs, and more often than not they could do no more than stand by and watch as Karadˇzi´c’s Serbs overran the socalled safe havens and violated other agreements. Nothing was done to censure the acts of those who terrorized the civilians. Though a war crimes tribunal existed, it was dormant; its head judge was not appointed until 1993, and its first indictments were only issued in 1995.16 In early 1993, leaders in the UN and the EC worked together to find a solution to the Bosnian problem. The fruit of their efforts was the so-called Vance–Owen plan, which called for the Muslims, Serbs, and Croats to each control three provinces, while Sarajevo would remain under UN control. The plan was peddled to the Bosnian Serbs and their patrons in Yugoslavia, but to no effect. By May of 1993, the Bosnian Serbs controlled far more territory than the plan allotted to them, and were not interested in sharing control of their newly acquired territory with anyone else. Undaunted, the UN and EC trotted forward a new plan in the following year that aimed to break Bosnia into a confederation composed of the three major ethnic groups. This time it was Izetbegovi´c who backed down, because he saw his country as a single multiethnic state, not as three separate states. But to his dismay, the latter was materializing by force of arms by 1993, as the Bosnian Serbs now controlled two thirds of the country.17
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To make matters worse, radical Bosnian Croats had begun to follow the Serb precedent and carve out part of southwestern Bosnia, known as Herzeg–Bosnia, for themselves since the autumn of 1991. The Bosnian Muslims resisted the creation of yet another state within the borders of Bosnia. As of April 1993, Croats and Muslims, who had only recently fought together against the Serbs—now fought each other. Civilians on both sides were killed as Croats and Muslims woefully imitated the Serb ethnic cleansing policy. The city of Mostar, one of the most picturesque in Bosnia, was all but destroyed. By 1994, all of the major ethnic groups in Bosnia were fighting each other, and there appeared to be no end in sight.
International Intervention Turns the Tide Against Serbia, 1994–1995 The event that began to turn the tide in the war was a horrible bombing of civilians in an open-air marketplace in Sarajevo in February of 1994. The bombing was filmed by an American television crew and broadcast all over the world. The outrage over the incident compelled NATO to issue an order to the Serbs that they venture no closer than 20 kilometers outside the city. The move was meant in reality to protect UN forces in the area, but it did give non-Serb forces a boost. The military capabilities of the Croats and Muslims also increased when they began to smuggle in weapons in defiance of the UN 1991 ban on the sale of weapons to republics of former Yugoslavia. By 1994, the Bosnian army had over 100,000 men (as compared to 50,000 in 1991).18 As Croats and Muslims began to gear up for war, the Western powers tried to get them to work together to defeat the Serbs. Major Western powers now coalesced into the so-called Contact Group that included France, Germany, Russia, Great Britain, and the United States. The Contact Group put pressure on Muslims and Croats to get rid of their radical leaders and end their hostilities. They also proposed a plan to have Bosnian Croats join Croatia in a looser confederation, while remaining part of a Bosnian federation with the Muslims. The Bosnian Muslims and Croats ultimately accepted the plan. While Muslims and Croats talked peace, the Bosnian Serbs continued to pursue war with reckless abandon.19 The Contact Group dealt with this defiance by trying to drive a wedge between the Bosnian Serbs and their primary ally, Slobodan Miloˇsevi´c. By 1994, Miloˇsevi´c was eager to do business with the West as the economic sanctions that had been
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imposed against his country in 1991 and 1992 were beginning to take serious effect. Fearing erosion of his political strength in Serbia, Miloˇsevi´c was ultimately convinced that it was in his best interests to abandon the Bosnian Serbs. By the summer of 1994, Miloˇsevi´c, the once unshakeable supporter of the Bosnian Serbs, now rallied against them. His press organs now portrayed them as evil murderers of innocent civilians. He also cut off trade with the self-styled Serb Republic. But these measures failed to tame the Bosnian Serbs. They not only maintained their control over two-thirds of Bosnia, but also launched another offensive against Sarajevo. As of late 1994, 60 percent of the entire population of Bosnia had become refugees.20 Just when Bosnia’s position seemed to be hopeless, a Croatian offensive against the Serbs in 1995 eventually came to the rescue. The Croatian offensive began via delicate negotiations between Croatia’s president Tudjman on the one hand and the UN on the other. Since 1992, the Serbs had controlled one-third of Croatia and the new boundaries had been protected by 14,000 UNPROFOR troops. Now Tudjman wished to end UNPROFOR’s presence and regain his lost territory. The UN convinced Tudjman to renew UNPROFOR’s mandate in Croatia until the end of the year; in exchange, Tudjman agreed to the reduction of UN forces by one-half, and their relocation to Croatia’s borders as opposed to the truce lines agreed upon in Serbia’s favor in 1992. This agreement tacitly gave Tudjman the de facto go-ahead to reclaim territory lost to Serbia without interference by UN troops. In May of 1995, bolstered by arms from abroad, the Croatian army of 100,000 troops went on the offensive in Slavonia. Serbs quickly fled the area. The pattern was repeated in Krajina a few months later. The Croats next turned their sights to Bosnia. They joined with the Bosnian army, and their joint efforts worked to reduce the amount of Serb-held territory in Bosnia by 20 percent. After enduring three years of intense suffering, the Bosnian Muslims were finally able to fight back.21 The Bosnian Serbs, however, refused to be humbled by the joint Croat–Bosnian offensive. Nor did they even bother to strongly oppose it. Instead, they continued to ethnically cleanse eastern Bosnia and Sarajevo. In July of 1995, they took the “safe haven” of Srebrenica. In addition to terrorizing the general civilian population, the Bosnian Serbs murdered up to 6,000 Muslim men. Tragically, it was not the massacre of the Muslims of Srebrenica but Bosnian Serb violations of a NATO-proclaimed “no-fly zone” over Bosnia that spurred a military response by the West. By late summer of 1995, NATO planes bombed
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Bosnian Serb military targets. By September, Bosnian Serb forces finally pulled away from Sarajevo, ending a siege that had lasted for the better part of four years. Peace Talks and the End of the Civil War, 1995 The decline in the military fortunes of the Serbs in 1995 and the impact of economic sanctions in Yugoslavia combined to make them amenable to a Contact Group-proposed solution to the Bosnian problem. In September of 1995, representatives of the warring powers met in Geneva to consider the Contact Group’s proposal to retain Bosnia–Herzegovina as a legal entity that would consist of two parts: the Muslim–Croat federation of 1994, comprising 51 percent of Bosnia—and a Serb Republic (Republika Srpsk or RS), comprising the other 49 percent. Each part was allowed to draw up its own constitution and have separate relations with its neighboring states.22 The warring parties also agreed to establish commissions to oversee elections the proper treatment of refugees, and to preserve human rights. Peace talks along the lines proposed in Geneva were pursued in earnest in November of 1995 in Dayton, Ohio. The three antagonists, Miloˇsevi´c (who negotiated for Yugoslavia and the Bosnian Serbs), Tudjman, and Izetbegovi´c, were housed separately and carefully guarded when it was necessary for them to talk to each other. The final agreement kept Bosnia intact in theory, but in practice it was divided into the Muslim–Croat federation, and the Serb Republic, each with its own separate executive and legislative branches of government. The only mechanism of unity was a central government and a collective presidency. The military settlement was to be overseen by a new NATO force known as Implementation Force (IFOR) to be headed by NATO and commanded by an American general. Over 60,000 troops were stationed in Bosnia; the original mission was to remain in Bosnia for a year.23 Though the agreement ultimately ended the war, it did not satisfy the warring parties. The Bosnian Serbs were upset that their republic did not include Sarajevo, and the Muslims were dismayed that the territorial prewar status quo had not been restored. As far as the Muslims were concerned, the “dual state” status of Bosnia in effect legitimized gains that the Bosnian Serbs had made via a program of terror. This dissatisfaction complicated the process of keeping the peace in Bosnia. In the year following the Dayton Peace Accords (DPA), Sarajevo was reunified and elections were held to the new three-member presidency of Bosnia. But trouble brewed when Serbs refused to allow Bosnians to return to their homes.
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Though disputes of this nature were usually resolved by IFOR, they kept cropping up, thus making it clear that IFOR would have to remain in Bosnia longer than originally planned. In 1996, IFOR was replaced by its legal successor Stabilization Force (SFOR), which was half the size of its predecessor in terms of troop strength. Its job was to continue to create a secure environment for local and national authorities, along with international organizations. As of 2002, SFOR troops had been reduced to about 14,000, but a final pullout date had not then been scheduled.24 Origins of the Civil War Reconsidered Though SFOR has succeeded in its mission, the price for peace was high. By the time that peace talks were finalized in Paris in December 1995, well over 200,000 people had died and over two million were refugees. After the war, many questioned why it all had to happen in the first place, and why the international community took so long to intervene. At the war’s end, many pundits continued to insist that “ancient hatreds” were responsible for the carnage. As one journalist put it, “it is virtually impossible to comprehend the ferocity of what happened here, let alone fathom the . . . centuries-old enmities that encouraged it.”25 But many experts and scholars sharply disagree. They see the “ancient hatreds” thesis as an emotional knee-jerk reaction to the Balkan horrors rather than a reasonable explanation of its origins. War correspondent Christopher Bennett dismantles the “ancient hatreds” theory. Though he finds it “superficially compelling,” he adds, “the ‘ancient hatreds’ thesis does not stand up to serious examination. At best, it conceals great ignorance, at worst, it is downright disingenuous. While there is a great deal of hatred in the former Yugoslavia, it is hardly ancient or irrational. Indeed, it is only this century, and in particular, since the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes in 1918, that the south Slavs have had sufficient dealings with each other to fall out and come to blows.”26 Bennett adds that the animosity between the nationalities, “is in fact a very recent phenomenon and reflects the failure of the south Slavs to develop a durable formula for national coexistence in the course of the twentieth century.”27 Bogdan Denitch, a professor of sociology, also argues that the “ancient hatreds” theory cannot hold since Serbs, Croats, and Muslims had indeed lived together in peace for centuries in many areas of the former Austrian and Ottoman empires prior to the twentieth century.28
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If the so-called ancient hatreds were not responsible for the war, what caused it? Most experts agree that although national leaders such as Tudjman also incited conflict by fanning the flames of nationalism, it is Miloˇsevi´c and men of his ilk who are primarily to blame. Journalists Laura Silber and Alan Little, authors of Yugoslavia, Death of a Nation, argue that Miloˇsevi´c’s will to power was responsible for mass destruction: We trace the origins of the war to the rise of Serb nationalism among Belgrade intellectuals in the mid 1980s, and the subsequent harnessing of nationalist rhetoric by Slobodan Milosevic . . . His . . . clever manipulation of the politics of ethnic intolerance provoked the other nations of Yugoslavia, convincing them that it was impossible to stay in the Yugoslav federation and propelling them down the road to independence. Yugoslavia did not die a natural death. Rather, it was deliberately and systematically killed off by men who had nothing to gain and everything to lose from a peaceful transition from state socialism and one-party rule to free-market democracy.29
Journalist Misha Glenny also blames Miloˇsevi´c. He explains that Miloˇsevi´c used his control over the media to make Serbs fearful of Ustashe resurgence in Croatia and Muslim revisionism in Bosnia. Christopher Bennett adds that the animosity between the nationality groups has its origins “in contemporary interpretations of the past and can be dated to the 1980s and the media offensive which accomplished Slobodan Milosevic’s rise to power in Serbia.”30 In addition to instigating the conflict, Miloˇsevi´c was deliberately responsible for escalating it. Denitch points out that “the Serbian leadership bears the lion’s share of the responsibility for the destruction of Yugoslavia . . . it has also made inevitable the intra-ethnic civil war in Bosnia–Herzegovina and the civil wars or at least major internal disturbances within Serbia and Croatia.”31 Miloˇsevi´c’s biographers Dusko Doder and Louise Branson agree: “When . . . Croatia and Bosnia disintegrated into open ethnic warfare, Milosevic used intermediaries to foment and spread the violence, even as he presented the face of total noninvolvement to the world. Relying on organized lying, his secret policy and rogue proxies pushed the disintegration into a long bloodbath.”32 Tim Judah, however, appropriately points out that the ultranationalist politicians did not act alone: “The politicians could not have succeeded in Croatia and Bosnia if there had been no embers to fan . . . [although] everything that could possibly be done to reawaken the old demons of the past was done. But everyone must answer for their own
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actions, and, despite the manipulation of the media, far too many people simply abdicated their responsibility.”33 International Intervention in the Yugoslav Civil War—a Reappraisal Given Miloˇsevi´c’s obvious complicity in the disintegration of Yugoslavia and his approbation of a war of atrocities, the question remains as to why the international community allowed him and his allies to terrorize so many innocent people for so long. The answer is depressingly simple: by the early 1990s, the major world powers no longer considered Yugoslavia to be important in light of their own respective national interests. To be sure, the opposite had been true during the Cold War. Though a communist country, Yugoslavia had defied Soviet overlordship in 1948. The West happily rewarded Yugoslavia’s defection from the Soviet camp with economic and military aid. But with the end of the Cold War and the Soviet collapse, the attention of the United States shifted to problems in the Middle East. Britain and France were also preoccupied with the fear that newly unified Germany could upset the balance of power in Europe. (Needless to say, the British and the French were unnerved when Germany became the first major power to formally recognize the independence of Croatia and Slovenia in 1991.) In short, since Yugoslavia did not matter as much as it had in the past, the West was content with minimal involvement in the titanic problems that accompanied its disintegration. Western leaders at first found a convenient camouflage for their indifference to the Yugoslav civil war in the “ancient hatreds” thesis on its origins, which they eagerly co-opted. As Christopher Bennett aptly puts it, “To justify their inaction, statesmen and diplomats chose to interpret the war as a peculiarly Balkan phenomenon. It was allegedly the result of ancient and irrational animosities, inherent in the Balkan peoples, who had seemingly been at each other’s throats since time immemorial and were all as bad as each other.”34 Since the Yugoslavs were believed to be determined to kill each other no matter what, the West confined itself to providing humanitarian aid and noncombatant UNPROFOR troops. Western involvement may have remained at this minimalist level had it not been for relentless media coverage of the incredible suffering inflicted by the Bosnian Serbs, not to mention the latter’s disruption of humanitarian aid and abuse of UNPROFOR troops. The coverage exposed the fact that Western aid was ineffectual at best, and that
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stronger measures needed to be undertaken if the situation in Bosnia was going to change at all. Slowly but surely, the UN and NATO began to step up their intervention. In 1992, NATO established a no-fly zone in Bosnia, and bombed Bosnian Serb targets two years later. The more deeply NATO became involved, the more its most powerful member, the United States, began to take the initiative in the conflict. By 1995, it was the United States that restrained the Russians from helping the Serbs, their traditional allies. And by 1995, it was the United States that aided the offensive by redefining UNPROFOR’s mission in Croatia and by helping to train Croatian military leaders. It was also the United States that took the lead in the Contact Group’s negotiations with the belligerents until the DPA were ratified in Paris at the end of the year. The Persistence of Ethnic Conflict in Former Yugoslavia Today, the major players in the conflict are gone. Two years after his 1998 attempt to take over Kosovo was ended by NATO bombs, Miloˇsevi´c was deposed and extradited to stand on charges as a war criminal. His erstwhile allies Karadˇzi´c and Mladi´c, who have been indicted as war criminals, remain at large. Miloˇsevi´c’s successor, Vojislav Koˇstunica, is regarded as a staunch nationalist who has been critical of NATO policy toward Serbia. Tudjman died in 1999, and his nationalist party fell to the more moderate Croatian People’s Party in subsequent elections. Alija Izetbegovi´c resigned his presidency in 2000. But although the major players are gone, the conflicts that propelled them into power remain. Many experts have gloomily noted that prospects for peace and understanding between the national groups of former Yugoslavia are more remote than they were when the first Yugoslav state was born less than a century ago. Whether or not peacekeeping forces can even begin to build bridges of cooperation and understanding between them remains to be seen. Notes 1. Serb and Croat claims concerning the number of deaths at the camp vary wildly. Serbs claim that one million died there, whereas Franjo Tudjman, who was a historian before he became president of Croatia, claimed that 70,000 died. The Serb claim is incorrect as a total of 1.4 million Yugoslavs died in World War II altogether, and Tudjman’s numbers represent an underestimation of casualties in any case. Carole Rogel, The Breakup of Yugoslavia and the War in Bosnia, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998, p. 48.
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2. Rogel, Yugoslavia, p. 12. 3. Time Magazine, June 1980. 4. John R. Lampe, Yugoslavia as History. Twice there was a Country, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 352. 5. Dusko Doder and Louise Branson, Milosevic, Portrait of a Tyrant, New York: Free Press, 1999, p. 75. 6. Ian Jeffries, The Former Yugoslavia at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century, London: Routledge Press, 2002, p. 238. 7. Rogel, Yugoslavia, p. 25. 8. Rogel, Yugoslavia, p. 25. 9. Doder and Branson, Milosevic, pp. 94-5. 10. Christopher Bennett, Yugoslavia’s Bloody Collapse. Causes, Course and Consequences, New York: New York University Press, 1995, p. 172. 11. Rogel, Yugoslavia, p. 29 12. Doder and Branson, Milosevic, p. 97. 13. Rogel, Yugoslavia, p. 32. 14. Rogel, Yugoslavia, p. 64. 15. Rogel, Yugoslavia, p. 32. 16. Bennett, Yugoslavia’s Bloody Collapse, p. 197 17. Bennett, Yugoslavia’s Bloody Collapse, p. 198. 18. Rogel, Yugoslavia, p. 32. 19. Rogel, Yugoslavia, p. 36. 20. Rogel, Yugoslavia, p. 66. 21. Doder and Branson, Milosevic, p. 218. 22. Rogel, Yugoslavia, p. 39. 23. James Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will. International Diplomacy and the Yugoslav War, New York: Columbia University Press, 1997, p. 287. 24. SFOR website: http://www.nato.int/sfor/docu/d981116a.htm. 25. Cited in Leslie Derfler and Patricia Kollander, eds., An Age of Conflict: Readings in Twentieth Century European History, San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 2001, p. 371. 26. Bennett, Yugoslavia’s Bloody Collapse, p. 241. 27. Bennett, Yugoslavia’s Bloody Collapse, p. 241. 28. Bogdan Denitch, Ethnic Nationalism. The Tragic Death of Yugoslavia, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1994, p. 123. 29. Derfler and Kollander, An Age of Conflict, p. 359. 30. Bennett, Yugoslavia’s Bloody Collapse, p. 241. 31. Denitch, Ethnic Nationalism, p. 124. 32. Doder and Branson, Milosevic, p. 6. 33. Tim Judah, The Serbs. History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. 34. Bennett, Yugoslavia’s Bloody Collapse, p. 194. One of the most notable adherents to this theory is General Lewis Mackenzie, a Canadian officer. He accepted a mission in 1992 to command UN troops in Bosnia for several
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months in 1992. But he didn’t keep his job long because he insisted that all sides were to blame in the conflict. He continued to publicize his beliefs after he was relieved of his command. In 1993, he told the House Armed Services Committee: “Dealing with Bosnia is a bit like dealing with serial killers—one has killed fifteen, one has killed ten, and one has killed five. Do we help the one who has only killed five?” Ibid., p. 194, fn.
CHAPTER 2
The Genocide Factor in the Yugoslav Wars of Dismemberment Henry R. Huttenbach
Introduction
T
o observe the years of Yugoslavia’s fragmented demise through the lens of genocide calls for a brief introduction of the term itself. Its coiner—Raphael Lemkin—struggled to give the word substantive meaning. On the one hand, Lemkin was concerned with finding an appropriate conceptualization of genocide, namely, “What is the phenomenon genocide?”; on the other, Lemkin sought to spell out for lawyers exactly “What constitutes a genocidal act?” Both aspects of genocide—the thought and the deed—are enshrined in the 1948 United Nations’ Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. Though subsequent tribunals have adopted the UN definition, all have found it wanting in practice and even, at times, self-defeating. Not surprisingly, the idea and the execution of the crime of genocide have been amended and expanded to suit post–World War II circumstances, with the result that there was and remains considerable confusion and dissent as to the precise meaning of genocide, between “literalists” and “generalists” in interpreting the 1948 Convention. Thus, an event that is considered by some to be a clear-cut example of genocide may be interpreted by others as falling short of being a bona fide genocide. This, of course, poses a problem when assessing the multitiered instances of mass violence in the years 1989–94, the years of the political demise of the Yugoslav state into half a dozen independent political entities such as Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia–Herzegovina, Serbia, and
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Macedonia (with the possibility of two more—Kosovo and Montenegro). The central question is: when did mass violence erupting during the Yugoslav breakup cross the invisible line into unambiguous genocide? It is no idle question because the UN sponsored International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague is trying Croats, Serbs, and Bosnians on various counts of genocide. Depending how one interprets genocidal intention and genocidal action, an indictment may or may not lead to conviction. Again and again, lawyers for the UN sponsored prosecution have sought greater flexibility in the court’s understanding of what constitutes genocide and what falls outside its parameters. Part of the trouble lies with the impact of mass killing. Genocidal killing, a radical form of massacre, can be seen as an extreme kind of human rights violation; at the same time it has all the hallmarks of a war crime, especially if one defines genocide as a war declared by a state upon a segment of its population. Again and again prosecution and legal scholars have concluded that criminals suspected of having committed genocide are easier to prove guilty of having violated “lesser” crimes, such as crime against humanity or even a war crime. Proof of genocide is far more complex, they point out. First of all there is the slippery matter of intention. Intention is next to impossible to prove for lack of evidence: genocidists are careful not to leave a paper trail—Hitler signed nothing. In most cases of genocide, intention has to be inferred from the radical acts of genocide, which leaves the problem of determining when an instance of mass killing became genocidal. It is a thin line, largely depending on the impressionistic. In the case of the many acts of ethnic violence perpetrated on civilians during the wars of Yugoslav dismemberment, there was an additional complication, the term “ethnic cleansing.” Ethnic Cleansing Ethnic cleansing was a term coined by a journalist to describe what he witnessed in Yugoslavia. Recognizing the ethnic component of the wars and their acts of extreme violence, he linked ethnicity (as a motif ) to the idea of purging (i.e. killing)—hence “cleansing.” It was not he but others who picked up the term and made out of it a synonym for genocide. The term as an alternative to genocide has been absorbed into the general, everyday, vocabulary, but has no legal standing. The problem, therefore, is to translate what was dubbed an act of ethnic cleansing into a genuine act of genocide or something “less.” At the heart of ethnic cleansing is the act of mass expulsion of ethnic populations from a particular region. In Yugoslavia, all these incidents
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were accompanied by willful, lethal violence on a scale that suggested bona fide genocide. Taking the Lemkin criteria as a guideline, mass expulsions can be a part of a process endangering the existence of a group, though not necessarily. What has to be proved is whether real existential harm resulted in these incidents of large-scale brutal expulsion of Catholic Croats, or Orthodox Serbs, or Muslims (Bosnian or Kosovan), or of Romani (Gypsies). In retrospect, with hindsight, a qualified affirmative is in order in all cases of ethno-selective killings. The goal was not merely control of ancestral territory but also the elimination of the targeted ethnopopulations. If group consciousness rests also on territoriality, then the removal of an ethnic minority (or majority as was the case in Kosovo) is tantamount to posing an existential threat. In that case, the shadow (at least the suspicion) of genocide falls on most of the ethno-participants engaged in carving out their respective mono-ethnic state. What follows is an interpretation of the wars of Yugoslavia’s collapse seen through the prism of genocide. War and Genocide Recent scholarship on genocide has been exploring the war–genocide nexus, searching for the points where the two dissect, focusing on the area of overlap where war and genocide coincide, especially to determine their cause and effect relationship. The consensus to-date, at least in theory, is that war need not escalate into genocidal violence unless circumstances dictate; conversely, in practice, all genocides are ipso facto a kind of war. Because of the nature of its violence, genocide should be understood as lying within the parameters of war, both as a precipitator of war and as an offspring of war. In the last century genocide has taken place within traditional interstate wars, in civil wars, in wars of secession, in irredentist wars, in wars of colonial imperial expansion and contraction, in anti- and postcolonial wars of independence and power consolidation, and lastly, in a prima facie war of genocide declared and waged by a state against a targeted segment of its civilian population. In other words, war is a possible setting but not an absolute precondition for genocide, since genocide can erupt without an accompanying war. Nevertheless, all wars can and many do degenerate into genocide, serving as a warning to those looking ahead for clues of potential outbursts of radical, that is genocide-like violence. Given these sets of operative conclusions, how do they shed light on the multimega killings and policies that marked some stages of the
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disintegration of the multiethnic state of Yugoslavia, keeping in mind that genocidal violence was by no means automatic or inevitable? After all, in the several wars that accompanied the collapse of the Yugoslav state along ethno-territorial lines, genocidal violence did not characterize every phase. The most notable example was the first battle, the Slovenian war of secession. If anything, it was more of a symbolic war, whose violence remained on a very low level, best illustrated by the small casualty rate. The military power for greater bloodshed was available to the Yugo-Serbian side; but it was not unleashed. One could classify it paradoxically as a peaceful war, reminiscent of the peaceful, politically engineered divorce without serious violence, which characterized the elite-bartered breakup of Czechoslovakia and, even more dramatically, the quasi-grassroots stimulated dissolution of the USSR. Scholars who expected a replay of the post-1917 slaughter of the Russian Civil War were caught methodologically and conceptually off-guard. Conversely, if not ironically, no one anticipated the phenomenon of murderous ethnic cleansing that revolutionized the way scholars now regard the challenge of understanding the potency of ethnic conflict. In this case, it pertains to the unraveling of Yugoslavia into Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia–Herzegovina, Macedonia, and rump Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), a process of fragmentation by no means over. There remains open the question of Montenegro’s unresolved independence movement, of Kosovo’s autonomy, of Macedonia’s viability, and, potentially most destabilizing, the possible crack-up of Bosnia–Herzegovina with its three hostile rival ethnic enclaves cobbled together by the DPA. Genocide in the Yugoslav Wars Signs of genocide, in the form of ethnic cleansing, first reared their heads during the second phase of the war of Yugoslav disintegration. The first phase, as mentioned above, was Slovenia’s short and successful war of self-determination. The brevity of the hostilities was due to several factors: the key one was Slovenia’s ethnic homogeneity, over 95 percent. Its tiny minorities—Italians (on the Adriatic coast), Hungarians (in the east), and Germans (in the north)—had no urgent political or territorial ambitions, so could not be used as leverage by the Serbo-Yugoslav forces. A second factor was the surprising determination of the Slovenes to fight. Equally significant was that they were very well armed. The combination discouraged the Serbo-Yugoslav forces from engaging in serious battle. Another reason was the reluctance of Croatia to give Yugoslav (Serbian) forces unlimited transit rights, thereby helping to lay the
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foundation for the Serbian–Croatian confrontation, which proved to be an entirely different war in kind and in degree. The intensity of the fighting in the second phase was fueled by Belgrade’s determination to gain control over the sizeable Serbian populations and territories in Croatia, largely concentrated in Krajina and Slavonia. Initially, Belgrade had asked Croatia to guarantee the minority rights of Croatian Serbs, a deep concern that was rooted in traumatic World War II memories, when Nazi-backed Ustasha Croatia practiced genocide on its Serbian citizens in such concentration/death camps as Jasenovac and its satellite camps. When Zagreb failed to provide such assurances, Serbian forces helped the Croatian Serbs in the two enclaves to arm themselves, encouraging them to declare their independence as a first step toward merger into a Greater Serbia, a profound fear of the government in Zagreb, which also harbored deep-seated fears of becoming a part of a Serbian hegemonic state. Under these polarizing conditions, the Croat–Serbian war was fought with unsurprising ferocity. On the one hand Croatia sought to avert amputation of some of its historic territory, while Serbia energetically fought to enlarge its territorial and ethno-demographic base, a classic case of the collision of mutually exclusive national ambitions: hence the escalation in military violence, increasingly aimed at civilians. Croats came to regard the Serbian citizens as traitors and active collaborators, a latter-day fifth column, that needed to be disarmed and expelled en masse; whereas Yugo-Serbs in Belgrade felt duty-bound to protect their ethno-kin across the border from mass eviction—or at least that was how much of the rhetoric made events out to be. The second round ended in a stalemate: Krajina and Slavonia remained de jure in Croatia but under the de facto control of well-armed Serbian minorities backed by Belgrade. Seen through the prism of ethnic cleansing both secession states had two diametrically opposed goals: Croatia to expel the Serbian populations and retain the “ethno-purified” territory; the Serbs to gain the territories along with their Serbian inhabitants. Given the stalemate, the two foes secretly changed tack; they called an unofficial cease-fire and refocused their combined attentions on Bosnia–Herzegovina, which Presidents Slobodan Miloˇsevi´c and Franjo Tudjman agreed to divide, declaring the Bosnian Muslims to be their common enemy, covertly planning a war of extermination of the Bosnian Muslims. Ideologically, the two presidents agreed that a Muslim entity in Europe was totally unacceptable and had to be excised. This gave rise to the rhetoric of genocide and the commensurate ferocious
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fighting aimed at evicting Muslim citizens, testifying to the genocidal intentions and execution of both Belgrade and Zagreb. The first stage of the third war was a classic case of a war of partition, fomented by a Croat/Serb strategy, first to seize their respective “historic” lands in Bosnia–Herzegovina, followed by the attempted mass removal of Muslim populations within the internal borders of Bosnia, especially from the cities and towns. The overall goal was to nullify the Muslim enclave by means of a major war of attrition that increasingly took on the characteristics of a war of extermination, by preventing the formation of a viable Muslim army. Bosnian Croatian and Bosnian Serbian armies had large military stockpiles at their disposal, thanks to supplies from Croatia and Serbia, while the Bosnian Muslims were denied assistance due to an international arms embargo. Had they not received crucial supplies from Muslim countries (from Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Syria, even Chechnya) most Bosnian Muslims might have been erased from the map of Bosnia. The Serbian siege of Sarajevo was part of a battle designed to stop the formation of a viable Muslim state, to cripple the Bosnian capital, and to force Bosnian Muslims out of the city thereby creating a flood of uprooted refugees unable to return. The genocidal character of the war over Bosnia was manifested in two other areas, in the form of culturecide and gendercide. Culturecide Culturecide has long been practiced as an instrument of forced assimilation. It is aimed at a variety of targets, from the killing of the artistic elite of a nation (e.g. Stalin’s post–World War II campaign against Yiddish culture or Hitler’s suppression of Polish cultural life) to destroying cultural monuments (e.g. churches, mosques, etc.), of which there are too many examples to cite here except for three in the context of the wars of disintegrating Yugoslavia. The first was the deliberate bombardment of Croatian Dubrovnik by the Serbs, even though the city had no military or political strategic value. A second example was perpetrated by the Croats on the Bosnian Muslims of Mostar. At the heart of this Croat act of culturecide was the century-old Ottoman bridge, an architectural gem of international note, and a historic feat of preindustrial engineering. Again, the bridge spelled no strategic military supply road. On the contrary, it lay on the periphery of the struggle for Bosnia. The goal of the attack was none other than a willful effort to destroy a cultural edifice with which the Muslim
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community of Bosnia identified. In this case, the other goal was to destroy the multiethnicity of the town and leave it a homogenous Croatian population. A third example was that of Serbian culturecide visited upon the Bosnian Muslims in Sarajevo. During the siege of Sarajevo, the Serbian artillery, entrenched in the hilltops surrounding Sarajevo on three sides, had two goals: to terrorize the citizens out of the multiethnic city and, secondly, to demolish Muslim monuments, while carefully not targeting churches, Catholic and Orthodox, and synagogues. This time the cultural target was Sarajevo’s magnificent library, a unique architectural specimen, and its holdings of tens of thousands of irreplaceable manuscripts. The building was deliberately set on fire by incendiary shells. All contents—books and manuscripts—were lost. All that stands today is the charred shell of the exterior, the ruins serving as a reminder of the intensity of the culturecide that threatened to exterminate Muslim communal life in Bosnia. Gendercide Gendercide was another genocidal phenomenon practiced during the war of Yugoslav dismantlement in the context of Bosnia. As the term indicates, gendercide is mass killing according to gender. This can work in two directions: gendercide can be the targeting of women or men. The following example is about the systematic killing of all males as a means of jeopardizing the biological future of the targeted group. The incident took place in one of the half dozen Muslim towns in Bosnia declared “safe cities” under UN protection. This arrangement failed tragically in the case of Srebrenica. The handful of UN troops from Holland offered no resistance to the Bosnian Serb forces. After securing the town, the Bosnian Serb soldiers rounded up every Muslim male between the ages of 8 and 60. Approximately 8,000–9,000 were marched out of Srebrenica and promptly executed. Practically no one escaped the genocidal gendercide. The rest of the population, children, women, and old men were trucked out of the region and dumped in the woods to fend for themselves, their collective lives shattered by gendercide. Whether there is a sufficient number of surviving children for the population to recover is unlikely. At the time of writing some Bosnian Muslims have returned, but there are very few whole households. It is now known that the Bosnian Serbs had intended to ethnopurify the other “safe” enclaves, were it not for the DPA, which halted the fighting.
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The International Response International intervention, though it eventually managed to halt the violence, came too late to avert genocide. That it came too late sensitized the international community to the next crisis, the fate of Kosovo’s Albanian Muslims. President Miloˇsevi´c was determined to make the territory Serbian—administratively and demographically. Several years earlier, Miloˇsevi´c has rescinded Tito’s act, declaring Kosovo to be an autonomous republic within Serbia, in part to diffuse ethnic tensions and appease the claims of Yugoslav’s Albanian minorities (then also in Montenegro and Macedonia). In one stroke, Miloˇsevi´c had scuttled ethnic peace. He further fueled the crisis by settling Serbian refugees from Bosnia on the Kosovo border with Albania. At the same time, he launched a campaign of terror in Kosovo, designed to drive the Albanian minority out. Fearing new Bosnian-style violence, the UN in conjunction with NATO put pressure on Miloˇsevi´c to stop his policy of ethnic cleansing. An agreement at Rambouillet, France, authorized military actions until Miloˇsevi´c complied. This was the fourth phase of the violent breakup of Yugoslavia—this time in the context of genocide prevention. Preemptive action had its first day in the context of the threat of genocide in former Yugoslavia. This time, unlike Bosnia–Herzegovina, the worst was avoided. Miloˇsevi´c finally capitulated and the million plus Albanian refugees returned, most of them unscathed, though many had lost their homes and farms to Serbian looting and arson. Ironically and tragically, with the Albanian return a brand of counterethnic cleansing took place. Under NATO protection, Albanian militants drove Serbian and Roma minorities out of Kosovo in the name of ethnic homogeneity. Since then, most Serbs have failed to return though most Roma did return, largely because they received no asylum in Serbia. And so ends the survey of the genocidal dimension in Yugoslavia’s political demise.
Yugoslavia in Context In terms of genocide studies, one has traveled a long way since World War II. On looking back, the Hitlerian extermination of European Jewry seems relatively simple, both conceptually and in terms of execution. There was a criminal state which had designated the Jews as its mortal enemy and killed them accordingly, almost in a businesslike manner. Half a century later, in Yugoslavia, particularly in
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Bosnia–Herzegovina, the drama is not so simple. There one witnesses radical violence escalated by extreme interethnic interests. Before the war was brought to an end by international intervention, the wars in Bosnia–Herzegovina were characterized as genocidal but with differences. There were three antagonists and three victims: in that conflict each ethno-group—Bosnian Muslim, Croat, and Serb—was both perpetrator and victim in some degree. Genocidal and anti-genocidal stratagems and tactics can be ascribed to all three combatants. Depending on the circumstances, each group was either on the defensive or on the attack. When it went on the offensive it engaged in genocidal violence if circumstances permitted. Three-way polarization guaranteed a psychology of extermination. In the absence of modifying circumstances—except for foreign intervention—extreme violence won the day. Out of the ruins has come a new dynamic, namely, genocide/ethnic cleansing and counter-genocide/counter ethnic cleansing. This is not just a challenge to scholars in search of understanding but to jurists. For where is the line that separates defensive violence from offensive violence? If there is any seriousness attached to the old adage that “The best defense is offense,” then the legal distinction is nebulous. In the case of Bosnia–Herzegovina it has been simplified for political reasons. From the onset of the war over Bosnia, the international community’s operating consensus was that Serbia was the villain in the war. So, while the bulk of the onus of war crimes, of violations of human rights, of genocide, were put on Serbian shoulders, the equally serious crimes of the Croats and Bosnian Muslims were generally, at least initially, overlooked and, at least, ranked a distant second to the crimes of ethnic cleansing associated with Serbia. The results are a distortion of reality, and justice seriously compromised. But what is meant by “genocidal ethnic cleansing”? It is coined to stress what kind of genocide took place during the years of communal warfare in Bosnia–Herzegovina in particular and in Yugoslavia in general. By genocide is meant that a group has been selected for some degree of extinction, that its very existence is put into question, that an existential danger prevailed. The term ethnic is stressed in order to emphasize the cultural dimension and dynamics of the hostilities—that ethnic interests were of the highest priority and dictated most of the agendas. Lastly “cleansing”: this term has a long history in twentiethcentury political parlance. It was used in the context of Stalin’s brutal policies of the 1930s. Here, entire groups—the Party, peasants, the officer corps—were cleansed of “impurities”—hence the innocent-sounding term “chistka,” often translated as “a purge.” In medicine, the body is
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purged (cleansed) of toxins. Thus, cleansing in this usage is a term that raises thoughts of destruction, of ridding society of aliens. One does not tolerate mortal enemies; one rids oneself of all the toxins. This totalistic mind-set implies genocide. In Yugoslavia’s case the enemy was an ethnicity, which, in the context of the various civil wars of secession, led to genocidal violence. In several instances the hostile ethno-group resided on land considered to be the historic patrimony of the rival ethnogroup, which inevitably heightened the intensity of the fighting on both sides. On the one hand the “squatters” fought not only to fend off an enemy not to fall under his control, but also to prevent being expelled from the disputed territory. On the other hand, the challenger fought both to win territory but also to evict the alien population. This quickly brought the violence up to genocidal proportions. Furthermore it was fueled by fear, fear fanned by knowledge of similar battles which had generated large-scale numbers of refugees with nowhere to go. The fact that losing spelled the same treatment added to the degree of violence. Conclusion The wars of Yugoslav dismemberment provide a rich opportunity to study the varieties of genocide in the context of a disintegrating multiethnic state. Comparison with the demise of other such states may shed further light on the wars and their genocidal aspects, especially on the gnawing question: what accounts for the outbreak of violence and what deters it? And, what led to the radicalization of violence on one occasion and to the opposite on another? These are key questions for managing future crises of this kind. A key factor is the role of elites as voices of extremism or moderation. Why are they sometimes enthusiastically heeded, and sometimes rebuffed? Is there a counter-elite? Or is there a source of rejection in the cultural makeup of the masses? In Bosnia–Herzegovina, with few exceptions, clerics overwhelmingly supported ethnic warfare; few spoke on behalf of peace. They tended to politicize the rank and file from a religious perspective, working hand in glove with the ethno-radicalizing political leadership. The role of intellectual circles also provides tentative answers. While the wars went in their ethno-group’s favor, intellectuals tended not to oppose the violence; whereas when the tide of war turned against them, their voices spoke peace and ethno-reconciliation. There is nothing new in this cynical behavior; one can observe the same process in Nazi Germany, however feebly, toward the end of World War II. In sum, the case of genocide as a component part of the wars in Yugoslav dismemberment is an excellent exercise for analysis of the
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phenomenon of genocide. It serves as a warning to all weakening, postcolonial, multiethnic states. In the absence of a unifying identity and culture, ethnicity quickly asserts itself. With the loss of state, citizenship, and mainstream society, the individual is forced back into atavistic ethnic communities, the last refuge. Mikhail Gorbachev predicated his reform of the USSR on the existence of a robust Soviet meta-ethnic citizenry. He was found to be wrong. Parochial ethnic identification prevailed. The same happened in Czechoslovakia which rested on a hyphenated ethno-national identity; the hyphen proved to be insufficient to hold the two ethno-constituencies together. That they divorced peacefully is still an intriguing puzzle. Could there have been a violent breakup? Who and what is responsible for the bloodless divorce? This, of course, is the flip side of the questions coming out of the more complex multi-divorce in Yugoslavia, where the threat of genocide became a constant and was a reference point throughout the war. Genocide is undeniably a very visible thread in the rich tapestry of the last days of Yugoslavia. This leaves one to attempt one or two concluding observations. Genocides have been a visible and troubling part of the twentieth century. From the German slaughter of the Herreros at the start of the century to the massacre of the Tutsis in Rwanda at the end of the century, genocide in various guises has been attempted and achieved on most continents. Just as there are no geographic limitations to the crime, there are no other forms of parameters making people safe from genocidal acts except, perhaps, in truly democratic systems. The Right, no less than the Left, have no monopoly in genocide: whether for reasons of ideology, class, race, ethnicity, or religion, genocide has repeatedly reared its murderous head. When it did so against the Ottoman Armenians, those in the know ascribed it to the “Asiatic mentality.” When genocide exploded in the center of Europe, the Hitlerian Final Solution was catalogued as an aberration, a throwback to medieval barbarism, an exception, a kind of historic “glitch.” When it victimized the Ache Indians of Paraguay, literally no one cared to know about it. When the genocide of Pol Pot turned Cambodia into a vast cemetery, it was denied as a genocide for almost two decades. When genocide reached southeastern Europe it was at first ignored as being “impossible in the context of Europe.” It took years to feel the need to intervene; the DPA and the Rambouillet Agreement came too late for hundreds of thousands of ethnic victims. At first the crime was ascribed solely to the Serbs, the “villains” of the Western press. Only slowly was disbelief (a form of denial) overcome as ethnic conflicts turned into mutual unlimited slaughter: Croats and Bosnian
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Muslims proved just as inclined as the Serbs to commit genocide when given the opportunity. As we enter the twenty-first century, ethnic conflicts abound, many already engaged in various degrees of violence. Areas especially vulnerable to Yugoslav-style conflicts are Nigeria, the Congo, Indonesia, and India. In each, ethnic war is germinating and brewing, alerting the world that what transpired in Yugoslavia was no “accident” or “exception.” Postcolonial states, all of them to some degree multiethnic, are beginning to fall apart for sundry reasons; but in all of them, ethnic strife plays a critical role. This new century is fraught with the danger of repeated ethno-related genocide. The recently established International Criminal Court (ICC) will have its work cut out trying genocidists or near-genocidists. The world is far from being safe from the scourge of genocide, a phenomenon still not fully understood. Perhaps some lessons may be drawn from the political death of Yugoslavia, if only warning signals that were not heeded in time. Rwanda is a case in point in which there was an abundance of signs that should have alerted the international community but did not—a crime in itself! The mystery still remains: why, in some cases of conflict, is there no accompanying violence? If this riddle could be solved, then—perhaps—we may be a step closer to halting future genocides, and caught less by surprise, as was the tragic experience in Yugoslavia. Yet the twentieth century was not all bleak; there is an encouraging legacy of success in the war waged against genocide. (1) The term genocide was coined and defined and is now a central concept in global discourse. (2) The term has been enshrined as an international crime in the UN Convention. (3) Dozens of ad hoc tribunals have been set up to try genocidists. (4) A head of state has been indicted and is being tried for genocide. (5) An international court, the ICC, is now a permanent fact. (6) The principle of absolute sovereignty has been breached and can no longer serve as a safe haven for mass murderers. (7) The international community has recognized the right of humanitarian intervention in the case of genocide. These are significant achievements, though many more strides have to be taken.
CHAPTER 3
The Relationship Between the Dismemberment of Yugoslavia and European Integration Francesco Privitera
The Yugoslav Crisis
A
t the end of the 1980s, the EC was on the eve of a crucial new step in its development—broadening its political and economic substance.1 Mikhail Gorbachev’s accession to the position of general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1985, accompanied by the beginning of a reform process within the Soviet Union and the entire Soviet bloc, produced a period of détente between the two cold war camps that was especially pronounced in Europe. Gorbachev’s proposal to create a “Common European Home,”2 though it was met with reluctance in Brussels and the major European capitals, sparked a new debate on the future of the EC in the framework of the changes occurring in the Soviet bloc. Of course, no one in the West between 1987 and 1988 perceived the imminent geopolitical earthquake that would begin during the summer of 1989, and in a few months lead to the collapse of the Berlin Wall (9 November 1989) and the end of the Cold War. Brussels and the EC cabinets attempted to pursue business as usual, and reacted with the timid gesture of an agreement acknowledging mutual recognition between the EC and the Council on Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA). This was intended as a preliminary response from the EC
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to Gorbachev’s call for a “Common European Home,” but also as a confirmation of Western leadership in steering the European integration process that had begun in 1957 with the Treaty of Rome. Though many Communist leaders possessed reformist credentials similar to those of Gorbachev, they were not to be allowed to chart a course for the European integration process or to contribute to the definition of a political identity for Europe. The question was nonetheless opened at this point, and it was clear to the European cabinets that a serious debate on the political identity of Europe could no longer be put off, and that the EC must pursue transformation well beyond the stage of a simple common market. With this serious discussion in its beginning stages, the crises of the Communist bloc erupted. During 1989, suddenly and unexpectedly, the Communist bloc entered into a process of disruption. At the outset, the Hungarians opened their borders with Austria, breaking through the “Iron Curtain” and allowing thousand of citizens of the Eastern bloc, in particular East Germans, to move to the West. Subsequently, in a kind of domino effect, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and Bulgaria were swept by massive protests, strikes, and rallies. The process culminated during the night of 9 November 1989, when thousand of East Berliners assaulted the Wall and crossed to the other side, making it unmistakeably clear that an era was closed. The old system was gone, but no alternative was as yet in place. What would be the destiny of the new Europe coming into being? How might it be possible for the EC to maintain control over its own development under the radically changed circumstances? And how would the “German Question” posed by the collapse of the Wall be resolved? In view of these rapid and dramatic changes, the EC immediately decided to accelerate the creation of a common currency, a goal that had recently been revived after having been abandoned during the 1970s. With the typical functionalist approach that has characterized a large part of the European unification process, European cabinets decided to prioritize the economic sphere as a basis for strengthening political cooperation. A road map for the decade to come was set in place oriented toward the creation of a common currency on the basis of strong criteria for eligibility, with the intent of launching the Euro as a new EC currency unit around 2000. The question of the Euro did not directly involve political cooperation, but it was widely understood that a common currency would require a stronger political body. In the event, it was quite clear to the European cabinets that their job would be to negotiate a new and more robust political sovereignty for the EC.
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The EC agenda nonetheless failed to take account of the rapid changes occurring in Eastern Europe. The sweeping ramifications of the collapse of the Communist bloc were much deeper than was widely presumed in the West. In fact, in the euphoria generated by the end of the Cold War, the real challenges of the situation were underestimated in both East and West. For the East, liberation from Soviet domination was interpreted as the key to becoming “Westernized Europeans” including rapid inclusion in European institutions. For the West, by way of contrast, the end of the Cold War was interpreted as a stimulus to efforts to deepen the EC process, particularly through the creation of a common currency, without fear of the Soviet bloc.3 The EC scenario was moving rapidly toward an uncertain future. The 1989 “revolution,” to use Ralf Dahrendorf ’s terminology,4 was not producing the “End of History” defined by Francis Fukuyama.5 It had instead given rise to an acceleration of history. A first dramatic consequence was the unification of Germany. When, in 1990, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl pushed for the unification of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the GDR, he risked destabilizing the EC as well as the whole of Europe. At the outset, France, led by President François Mitterrand, strongly opposed German unification. Enormous tensions were the consequence. For Paris, the increased size of a unified Germany risked minimizing French leadership in the EC. But after months of political confusion, Mitterrand changed approach and opted for strengthening the EC as a political instrument in order to create a “containment framework” for the new Germany. According to French calculations, only a strong EC could include Germany in a framework capable of blocking any possible German “revanchism.” For the French, intergovernmental cooperation between the EC countries became the preferred way to strengthen European political capacity, instead of the European federalist approach championed by Germany. According to the French logic, co-opting the German government in shared European policies would offer greater guaranties than a federal option, where the size of Germany would inevitably dilute French leadership within the EC. By way of contrast, the United Kingdom, under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, maintained its traditional euro-scepticism and opposed any kind of deepening of EC institutions. London supported German unification in order to balance France’s political role on the Continent, and to slow down the deepening process within the EC itself.6 In addition, London’s participation in the 1990–91 Gulf War manifested a will to be the closest global partner
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of the USA and a kind of “American agent” in Europe. London sought to limit the strengthening of the EC to the domain of the common market, including the protection of Western markets from competition from East European goods. Despite London’s agenda, the Gulf War crisis made evident the need for the EC to transform itself into a stronger international political subject capable of producing a coherent common policy. This was, in principle, one of the main reasons for the decision taken by EC members to sign the Maastricht Treaty. Negotiations were nonetheless very difficult, in part because of the strong opposition by the United Kingdom to any kind of enlargement of the political dimension of the EC, and to any kind of supranational political and institutional body. As this debate was inaugurated, dramatic events elsewhere further complicated the issue. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) was swept into a massively destructive civil and ethnic war to which Europe as a whole was forced to respond.7 The genesis of the Yugoslav breakdown lies in the decade of difficulties that followed Josip Broz Tito’s death in 1980, during which the country failed in an effort to overcome the legacies of the past, as well as to address demands for reform and new direction emanating from society. Whether or not the Yugoslav crisis was an “inevitable” consequence of the contradiction of the Titoist system, it erupted just as the EC deepening process was reanimated between 1990 and 1991. When the Yugoslav Constitution of 1974 was introduced, the ground for important changes and reforms within the Yugoslav system was already established. Both the six Yugoslav republics and two autonomous regions received a semi-federal status. In this way, relationships between the different national components were improved, as well as the capacity to represent their own particular interest outside the context of the Federation. But the federal decision-making system remained much too rigid compared with the greater flexibility achieved by individual federal units.8 At the same time, Yugoslav society had begun a process of significant transformation. The Yugoslav self-management system produced considerable cultural and economic differentiation within the country’s various social groups (especially when compared with other communist countries), and many of these groups were now asking for political representation within the League of Communists. Soon, these requests would be broadened to include representation outside what was about to become another “former” ruling party.9 The economic performance of the self-management system had been very good during the expansive phase of the 1960s and 1970s. In addition, the nonalignment policy
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promoted by Tito since the 1950s, as well as the strategic role played by Yugoslavia as a “balancer” in Cold War competition in Europe, offered opportunities for obtaining financial support from the IMF and World Bank. At the end of the 1970s and through the 1980s, however, the Yugoslav economy entered into a deep crisis. During these years, accumulated structural imbalances, including enormously increased foreign debt, combined with negative global economic trends, created severe socioeconomic turbulence. For all these reasons, as the 1980s dawned Yugoslavia stood at a crucial crossroads: one road led toward far-reaching and fundamental reform, and the other toward tragic and inevitable failure. Yugoslavia was ready to introduce reforms gradually, since the post-Tito leadership was aware of the need for them. The question was how to manage a reform process when the rest of the communist countries in Europe, including the Soviet Union, were locked into a rigid orthodox position, as the Polish example clearly demonstrated.10 The Yugoslav communist leadership was afraid to produce a destabilizing effect in the Soviet bloc, as had occurred indirectly during the 1956 Hungarian crisis. In effect, the achievement by Yugoslavia of a real “national way” to communism, after the 1948 break with Moscow, transformed the Titoist federation into a model for all reformers in the Soviet camp, creating ideological and political competition between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.11 Yugoslavia was well aware of this situation, as well as the fact that aid received from the United States and various international organizations since the 1950s was granted within the framework of a strategy of destabilization toward the Soviet bloc strongly promoted by Washington.12 Therefore, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, repeating the policy of intervention pursued in 1956 in Hungary and 1968 in Czechoslovakia, and after the 1981 military crackdown led by General Wojciech Jaruzelski which crushed Poland’s Solidarity movement, the Yugoslav leadership became very prudent about possible reforms. The fear was that reforms could provide an occasion for the Soviet Union to put an end to the Yugoslav experiment. As a result, when a crisis erupted in Kosovo in 1981, the Federation acted in a very prudent and timid way, although the need to begin a reform process as soon as possible was quite clear. Yugoslavia was in a position to launch reforms with a considerable head start compared with other nations within the Soviet bloc, including Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet Union, but the Yugoslav leadership never took full advantage of its relatively favorable situation. Would Yugoslavia be able to anticipate the direction of the future post-communist transition, eventually initiated in Hungary and Poland
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on the eve of 1989? The possibility for positive adaptation was present, given awareness within the Yugoslav leadership of the need for political changes, and intensifying pressure from both within and without. On one hand the most developed Yugoslav republics, such as Slovenia and to a lesser extent Croatia and Serbia, where urban society was generally quite advanced, were transforming themselves into islands of civic society prepared for a possible Yugoslav glasnost’.13 On the other hand, however, both the IMF and World Bank, influenced by the free trade policies of the US administration of President Ronald Reagan, began to request reimbursement of the grants from which Yugoslavia had benefited in the past, creating a dispute within the Federation about the amount to be reimbursed by each republic. In fact, the country was unable to reimburse such grants at the same time that it needed new international support to help launch a reform program. For all of these reasons, the Yugoslav leadership acted very timidly in the social and political sphere, postponing any serious reform program to a better time. When Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union in the 1985, the time had arrived. The Yugoslav leadership welcomed Gorbachev’s election as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in the hope that it would become the prelude to a new, more positive relationship with the Soviet Union. When Gorbachev launched his reform course under the rubrics perestroika and glasnost’, similar initiatives were already in the minds of Yugoslav leaders. Unfortunately, it was too late. During the long years spent waiting for a better international framework the Federation’s domestic situation had become considerably exacerbated, with an economic crisis erupting at the same time that sources of external assistance disappeared. Additionally, the rapprochement between East and West produced by the new international approach promoted by Gorbachev was transforming the logic of the Cold War, as well as the geopolitics of Europe and the world. Yugoslavia was rapidly losing its strategic position in the international context, and from a Western perspective becoming more marginal. Yugoslavia’s inability to reverse the course of economic decline gave rise to social tensions that were rapidly transformed into national claims. Simultaneously, as the country became more marginal in the international context, it became more difficult to attract international aid to help resolve its many problems. As the Federation, in crisis, was increasingly preoccupied by domestic nationalist quarrels, its credibility and ability to attract sympathetic international support further declined. Deferred reform had given rise to a dangerous vicious circle.14
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East is East and West is West Following the 1989 events, the EC evaluated possible policies toward Eastern European countries in support of democratization, as well as measures to encourage the introduction of a market economy. At that time, the EC approach to transition was still very timid and confused. The main preoccupation of Western cabinets was how to face expected mass migration from the East. Poor living conditions within the countries of Eastern Europe after the collapse of the communist regimes encouraged the fear of an invasion of the richest Western countries by impoverished labor migrants in search of prosperity and dignity. The Western mass media presented apocalyptic scenarios that envisioned millions of easterners arriving like “locusts,” destabilizing the peaceful life of the West. The landing on the Italian coasts of thousands of desperate Albanians, seeking to escape from hopeless poverty, offered European cabinets a dramatic example of a possible future confronting the West as a whole. In this context, the main interest of the EC became to adopt procedures for preventing and stopping any migration flows from the East. These procedures produced a strengthening of controls on the EC borders and a new set of common rules for containing migration flows.15 Apart from the migration issue, however, the EC was unprepared to face the radical changes occurring in Eastern Europe. The notion of a new “Marshall Plan” for the East circulated within the EC, but it quickly became clear that it would be impossible to act upon. First, the EC was unable to direct any such plan, given the lack of strong leadership to make it coherent and effective. Second, no member states were prepared to accept an EC lead which, at that point in time, meant surrendering partial sovereignty to Brussels. Nor were any of the member states ready to offer grants to the EC for aid to the East. Finally, following the euphoria of the end of the Cold War, public opinion (and no doubt elite opinion as well) was completely unprepared for the dramatic escalation of the crisis of transition that was about to ensue. The most dramatic manifestation of that crisis was the violent collapse of Yugoslavia, which generated new preoccupation in Brussels and in Western cabinets. This was a dilemma of major proportions, but also an extraordinary occasion to demonstrate the capacity of the EC to manage such situations, and to act coherently as a real political subject. Indeed, circumstances posed the real necessity for the EC to deepen and strengthen its political will and action. With the collapse of Yugoslavia, 1991 became a crucial year for the EC and the future of Europe. Rather
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than approaching the “end” of Fukuyama’s prediction, history was running very fast indeed. The Yugoslav crisis immediately revealed the fragility of EC institutions. By chance, the declaration of secession issued by Slovenia and Croatia on 25 June 1991, occurred during a session of the EC governmental board, which promptly nominated an EC representation—the so-called troika—in order to conduct mediation.16 Formally, since the Yugoslav crisis had entered its final stage from the beginning of 1991, EC policy had asserted support for the integrity of the Federation. Nonetheless, not only did individual member states promote specific and often contradictory policies toward the crisis, but the EC itself ended by legitimizing the gestures of the secessionist republics indirectly.17 Confusion over policy was heightened by the considerable intricacies of the Yugoslav situation. Since 1989, Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia had acted simultaneously in opposition to the Federation. Though each republic pursued specific goals, they worked together to undermine the capacity of the Federation to carry on the economic and political reforms promoted by the Federal Premier Ante Markovi´c. On one side, Slovenia and Croatia demanded the reconfiguration of the Federation into a kind of “Yugoslav Commonwealth” or “Yugoslav Community” based on the model of the EC, with strong commercial links but a weak political profile. On the other side, Serbia sought the perpetuation of a unified Yugoslavia in order to maintain all the Serb communities of the country within a common federal body, and to strengthen centralized authority as a reaction against Slovene and Croat separatism.18 Although Slovene and Croat secessionism was much more explicit, Serbia also considered secession to be a serious political option, so long as this included the possibility of maintaining all Serbs within the boundaries of a single state. The Federation was constrained by separatism within the republics, and by a lack of credibility within the international community. It was paradoxical that Slovenia, and to a lesser extent Croatia, were indeed further along the road of democratic transition than the Federation as a whole. The EC was continuously asking the Federation to expedite the democratization process, imposing a kind of conditionality according to which the more democracy developed, the more aid and financial support would be forthcoming. This situation was creating a vicious circle, with the politics of nationalism in Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia undermining all attempts by the Federation to carry out systematic reform nationwide. In order to obscure this reality, utilizing a sophisticated media campaign,
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Slovenia sought to promote the perception within the EC and the international community that it was the Federation itself that was sabotaging democratic transition within the republics, and especially within Slovenia, portrayed as a democratic “Cinderella” pitted against the Federation’s communist old guard. On the contrary, the Federation was promoting a set of reforms relevant for the whole country, but it was quite easy for the Slovene media to obscure the difference between Yugoslav federal institutions and greater Serbia nationalism for outside observers. As a result of such misperception, the EC began to treat the democratization issue as a Slovene or Croat or Serb problem outside the context of Yugoslavia as a whole. One consequence was that within Europe, from 1990 onward, confidence in Yugoslavia’s ability to survive decreased rapidly. EC and Yugoslavia in the Mirror Paradoxically, at the same time that the EC and its most prominent member states were engaging in Yugoslavia’s process of dissolution, they were simultaneously mediating the future Maastricht Treaty, intended to further the European integration process. But this is a relative paradox, because the logic that produced the two processes was actually quite similar. During the meetings at different EC levels that prepared the ground for the Maastricht agreement, the key question under discussion remained the political goal of the deepening process of EC institutions. The majority, led by Germany, favored a federal solution, modeled on the German federal system. The minority, led by France, pushed for an intergovernmental model. The United Kingdom fiercely asserted its hostility to the federal approach all through the Thatcher mandate, but was ready to accept a limited application of the intergovernmental approach. In the end, the first option prevailed. The Benelux countries were much more sympathetic to the federal model, because it offered more political visibility to small states. In Italy, traditional pro-European feeling was the result of the need to reinforce national political institutions in the framework of the European deepening process. Germany wanted to demonstrate its will to be linked strongly to the original European perspective following the slogan: better a European Germany, than a German Europe.19 Paris was nonetheless very suspicious, both because in the context of the Yugoslav crisis, Germany appeared to revert to a role comparable to its old style power politics, and because the size of
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unified Germany risked altering previous balances within the EC and calling French primacy into question. All these political issues were crisscrossed as Yugoslavia collapsed, giving rise to a crescendo of diplomatic activities within the EC and between the EC and Yugoslavia. From January 1990 onward, the situation in Yugoslavia changed rapidly. The extraordinary congress of the League of Communists, intended to launch the transition process to democracy and federal reform, took place in Belgrade. The Congress began in an atmosphere of extreme tension, because the Slovene delegation had already informed the other participants of the possibility that it might walk out if its positions were not accepted. The Slovenes were asking the Congress to officially transform the Federation into a “Commonwealth” of the six republics and two autonomous regions. This was a kind of ultimatum, which compromised the work of the assembly from the outset, and virtually obliged the other delegations to refuse Slovene demands. In the end the Slovenes abandoned the Congress, and the Croat delegation opted to leave with them, provoking a political earthquake.20 Suddenly, the League of Communists, the most relevant political subject in Yugoslavia, had disappeared, creating an unprecedented political vacuum. The reform Congress that the country had waited for since the beginning of the 1980s had disbanded after several days without accomplishing anything, and Yugoslavia was left to enter the postcommunist transition without any kind of introductory phase such as was organized under the auspices of “round tables” in Poland and Hungary. The attempt of the Federation, led by Premier Markovi´c, to take the lead role in piloting the transition through general elections and the building of a democratic federal parliament that would prepare a new Constitution, failed because of the strong opposition of Slovenia, Croatia, and a supportive Serbia. The EC, perhaps wilfully, misunderstood the situation completely. Instead of supporting the Federation, the EC decided to back the republics, posing democratic transition in Yugoslavia as a bottomup process, and not vice versa. This was the only case among postcommunist transitions in Eastern Europe where the democratization process was not allowed to proceed from top to bottom. Even in the case of Czechoslovakia, which broke apart into two entities (the Czech Republic and Slovakia) at the end of 1992, no similar dynamic was allowed to take hold, nor was the process of dissolution conditioned by EC policy in the same way.21 During the spring of 1990, Slovenia and Croatia went to the polls for the first time, under the aegis of the EC, to elect republic level leaders.
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In both cases, the victors were anticommunist movements and parties, like Demos (a seven-party coalition) in Slovenia, and the HDZ in Croatia. The winners took control of the parliaments as well as the relevant public institutions and broadcast communication systems. Though usually conducted in a relatively free and fair manner, republic-level elections, conducted over the course of an entire year without any federal-level elections as a balancer, went far toward delegitimizing the Federation itself. A huge political gap between the republic governments and federal institutions was produced, and many of the new republiclevel leaders sought to characterize the federal government as a last representative of a discredited communist past (despite the fact that Ante Markovi´c’s commitment to democratic norms was almost certainly more sincere than that of his republic-level counterparts).22 By continuously boycotting the Federation’s initiatives, Slovenia and Croatia (and to some extent Serbia as well) encouraged an image of democratic republics defending themselves against attempts by the communist-led Federation to restore central control in order to stop the democratic transition already underway at the local level. With the help of a powerful media campaign, the mobilization of public opinion in the West through the Church, and the cultivation of support among centerleft parties as well, Slovenia and Croatia were able to mobilize strong international opposition to the Federation. Nobody, in this dirty game, except at the level of the Federation, gave any thought to the destiny of Bosnia–Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Kosovo, the areas that would become the big losers in the Yugoslav transition.23 In the end, the more public opinion in the West was drawn to support the positions of the separatist republics, the more the EC reduced its support for the Federation. Lack of outside support for a national-level reform agenda ensured that the Federation’s policies would be ineffective, producing ever-greater frustration within the country. By the end of 1990 it was clear that the Federation was losing control over events. Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia were accelerating the dissolution process, with Bosnia–Herzegovina and Macedonia standing aside as passive actors. In order to demonstrate to the rest of Europe its democratic vocation after unification, in 1991 Germany began openly to support the Slovene and Croat secessionist movements. Germany based its policy on the assumption that, since the right of self-determination had been the foundation for German unification, it should not be denied to other smaller peoples looking for their freedom from communist federations.24 Though the German approach was based on a principled definition of self-determination as a human right integral to democracy,
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Bonn’s activism toward Yugoslavia undermined EC policy (already confused, as we have seen) and produced irritation in the other European Cabinets. With negotiations underway among the member states for the final political agreement on the deepening of the EC, the new Germany demonstrated its enormous potential power in the Yugoslav crisis. The German attitude toward the Yugoslav secessionist republics moved France and Great Britain to push harder for the intergovernmental approach in the framework of the future EC, in order to contain Germany. In the Yugoslav context, France and the United Kingdom also decided to support the Federation, through support of Serbia, in order to balance German intervention. As a result, the situation became ever more confused. In reality, French and British political actions worked against the Yugoslav Federation. The federal idea that Slobodan Miloˇsevi´c promulgated as prime minister in Serbia was closer to a greater Serbia project than to the democratic federation imagined by Ante Markovi´c. With their balancing policies, Paris and London, together with Bonn, were reproducing old style power politics interventions in the Balkans, without offering any real solution for the present crisis. The Yugoslav crisis had immediately demonstrated to Western cabinets how easy it was to revert to old style power policies in the absence of a strong political framework such as had been provided by Cold War bipolarity over so many decades. In order to prevent possible clashes between European states, there was an immediate need to create a new, robust political framework within which to relocate European political dynamics. Awareness of this need quickly took hold within many European cabinets. Therefore, between the end of 1990 and 1991 and in parallel with the Yugoslav crisis, the most important member-states of the EC tried to reconfigure the European balance of power within the EC’s reform process. Negotiations were underway when in June 1991, as has already been mentioned, Slovenia declared independence, followed in short order by Croatia. These declarations propelled Yugoslavia into war. They also encouraged the EC to move forward with its own, final political framework. The day after the Slovene declaration, the Yugoslav army took control of the international borders of Slovenia and became involved in the first armed confrontations between the army and Slovene reservists. This was the last, confused attempt by the Federation, through the use of armed force, to impose its sovereignty in separatist Slovenia.
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By coincidence, as armed confrontation erupted in Slovenia, the Luxembourg presidency of the EC was preparing a pilot project on the political, social, and economic deepening of the EC. This project was based on three “pillars.” The first was the reorganization of EC instruments and functions in order to enlarge them. The second was the creation of the foundation for a common foreign policy and security policy, an initiative that had become urgent in view of the Yugoslav crisis. The third was promotion of the enlargement of the judiciary and the Community’s public sphere. The proposal of the Luxembourg presidency represented a serious effort to mediate between the different positions inside the Community. Despite its modest trappings, the proposal was quite significant when viewed in the context of the tense atmosphere created within the EC by the Yugoslav crisis. Nevertheless, the troika of foreign ministers established by the EC hurried to Yugoslavia with the intent of negotiating a cease-fire and launching negotiations. A temporary moratorium on declarations of independence and armed confrontations was agreed to by all belligerents under the aegis of the EC. This appeared to be a successful outcome for the first serious EC engagement in foreign and security issues, and it galvanized the Community to strive for more. In the end, however, the EC was not able to build on the momentum of the accord. The member states were unable to agree about the possibility of sending a European peacemaking force to Yugoslavia. Additionally, there was no agreement about the destiny of the Federation in the event that Slovene and Croat secession would go forward. Although the second pillar of the EC’s deepening agenda was dedicated to security issues and the need for a common foreign and security policy, the member states gravitated toward contrasting positions. France and Germany were very cooperative in the security sphere and had worked to create the first “EuroCorps,” a mixed Franco–German unit connected to NATO. For France and Germany it was clear that in the future the EC needed some military capacity linked to NATO, including the cooperation of the Western European Union (WEU). The British opposed this project, perceived as the germ of European competition with NATO as the guarantor of European defense, and as a possible source of friction with the United States. At the same time, Washington was promoting a redefinition of the role of NATO in a global, geopolitical perspective, as was demonstrated by NATO intervention in the Gulf War. Somewhat unexpectedly, Italy also assumed a position in this debate. During the summer, the Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Gianni
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De Michelis, signed a common defense project proposal with his British colleague Douglas Hurd, asserting the supremacy of NATO and partially contradicting the French–German proposal that Italy had already approved. The Italian change of direction created confusion and tensions among the partners. One possible explanation for the change points to German behavior during the summer in the Yugoslav crisis, which irritated Italy, coming as it did at a moment when its foreign minister was involved in the EC attempt to mediate the crisis. While Italy and the other members of the EC troika were negotiating with the secessionist republics and the Federation, Germany took a clear position in favor of the separatists. Rome tried to maintain a coherent pro-Yugoslav approach, and was particularly worried about the survival of the Osimo Treaty regulating the status of the Trieste area, and possible danger in border regions.25 Italy felt constrained, albeit somewhat awkwardly, to block the French–German project in order to reinforce a balance in Europe against Germany. In the last phase of the Maastricht Treaty negotiations, however, the Italian–British position was in the minority. In September, after a meeting between the German Minister of Foreign Affairs Hans-Dietrich Genscher and De Michelis, Italy once again aligned with German positions concerning European defense and management of the Yugoslav crisis. This new change of direction once again created confusion among the partners. The final result was that Rome became marginalized during the remainder of the decision-making process, both concerning the Maastricht Treaty and the development of the Yugoslav crisis.26 At the end of the moratorium, fighting once again broke out in Yugoslavia, this time in Croatia. Croat and Serb militias were now engaged in local battles for control over the Slavonia and Krajina regions, where the local Serb population had declared a right of selfdetermination and their intention to remain attached to Yugoslavia, the same principled stance that the Croats had referred to in forwarding secession. The situation in Yugoslavia was becoming more intricate, and violence was transforming the conflict into an endemic problem involving large parts of the civilian population. The risk of a mass flight of refugees into the EC suddenly became an imminent reality. In addition, the violent ethnic cleansing imposed by nationalist militias against civilians, with the aim of “homogenizing” districts as a basis for territorial claims, shocked European public opinion and heightened the stakes for all concerned. The different positions adopted by EC member states in regard to Yugoslavia’s collapse, as well as the long and apparently inconclusive negotiations over the Maastricht Treaty, created a sense of general
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frustration in European public opinion, and strong disillusionment concerning Europe’s real political capacity. When Germany, at the end of 1991, declared its unilateral will officially to recognize the new Slovene and Croat states on 1 January 1992, a reluctant EC opted to join with the German position. In any case, the Yugoslav Federation had for all intents and purposes gone out of existence at this point, as the EC’s Badinter Commission declared in its final report.27 But even if the old Yugoslavia was no longer a relevant actor (a measure of the EC’s failure to prevent its dissolution), the question of the capacity of the EC to manage the Yugoslav crisis in its current phase of open armed conflict was still open. During the final rush to conclude the Maastricht Treaty at the end of 1991, nobody in the Community wanted to open a political confrontation with Germany over its unilateral recognition of Slovenia and Croatia. On the contrary, delusion inside the EC over the course of events in Yugoslavia, and realization that the future of the area was likely to be bleak, combined with the perceived need to contain Germany in a strong European political framework, offered a basis for final agreement at Maastricht among the member-states. The most important decision taken by the EC was the agreement to create a common currency, albeit, for the time being, without the participation of the United Kingdom and Denmark. In principle, a commitment to construct a common foreign and security policy was also approved on the basis of the Franco–German proposal. On 17 February 1992 the treaty was signed in Maastricht, a locale symbolic of European divisions and conflicts in past centuries, conflicts that were now being repeated in the Balkan context. The name Maastricht would soon come to symbolize the will to overcome such conflicts through the European integration process. Unfortunately, the conflict simultaneously underway in former Yugoslavia, in part the product of a lack of will and political capacity on the part of the EC, would for a decade to come pose a continuous test for the progress and delays affecting Europe’s attempt to transform itself into a coherent political subject. Conclusions Since 1 January 2002, the Euro, the new common currency of the EU (the EC was renamed the EU in 1993) has been circulating in the pockets of millions of European citizens. The introduction of the currency has been one of the most striking political successes of the EU’s deepening process. A second striking success has been the enlargement policy seeking to bring the new democratic states of Eastern and Central Europe
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into the Union. Between 2004 and 2008 all the countries of Central Europe, with the exception of the western Balkans, will join the EU.28 It was not clear at the time that discussions were started that either of these results could be obtained. At the outset, there were serious doubts about the capacity of countries such as Italy, Spain, Greece, and Portugal to meet the EU’s strict criteria for joining a common currency zone and to keep pace with other partners, but in the end all of these countries successfully achieved their goals. Similar doubts existed concerning the capacity of Central European aspirants to meet conditions for full membership. In the end, however, the capacity of the EU to coordinate the accession strategy for Central European countries through the conditionality approach has helped the associated countries in developing policies respecting human and minority rights, thus reducing levels of tension in the region as a whole. Association and conditionality offered, indeed, the possibility for Central European elites to use the European discourse in order to manage the democratic consolidation processes as well as associated difficulties in the social and political sphere. Countries like Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria introduced significant changes in domestic policy with the goal of strengthening democracy and minorities’ rights. EU policy in this regard contributed to reducing tension, in Central Europe and the Balkan zone as well.29 The country that may have benefited more than any other from these changes in political atmosphere has been Macedonia. This small country, surrounded by difficult neighbors, has taken advantage of the change in priorities in Greece, Bulgaria, and Albania, which finally came to see Skopje as a potential strategic partner rather than a menace for the stability of the region. The fact that Macedonia was associated to the EU in 2000 helped the country to resist nationalist pressure from both Slavic and Albanian communities during the Kosovo crisis of 1999, and to overcome the violence that erupted during the following two years. The Ohrid Treaty, signed by Slavic Macedonians and Macedonian Albanians in August 2001 under the aegis of the EU, represents one of the most outstanding achievements of the new EU foreign policy, which has sought to negotiate a compromise arrangement acceptable to both sides, thus preventing renewed outbreaks of ethnic conflict in the region. Ten years previously it would not have been possible for political action by the EC to arrive at such a result. In this case, the positive performance has been based on a more effective capacity for coordinating the member states in a common foreign policy toward the Macedonian issue in particular, and toward the region as a whole. In the end, the EU was able to show
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that, potentially, it has the capacity to conduct a successful common foreign policy and security policy. A further demonstration of progress has been the assumption of greater responsibilities by EU forces in Bosnia–Herzegovina and Macedonia during 2003. The deepening process and the dynamic of enlargement have strengthened elite confidence and public trust in the capacity of the EU gradually to emerge as a political subject. But this process is still at the beginning, and will require at least a decade to come to fruition. There will be debates, polemics, and discussions inside the Union about the future government of Europe, where national positions are still significantly divergent, but in the end the deepening process “must go on.” Europe is well aware of the alternative to an ever closer union. It sees itself in the mirror every day when contemplating the ruins of former Yugoslavia. Only when Europe is able to solve the “Yugoslav question” definitively by stabilizing the whole Balkan area will it have achieved the goal of transforming itself into a real political subject capable of acting purposefully within a globalized world. Notes 1. The literature on the history of the European Community is very wide. For useful readings see: A. Matti, The Transformation of Europe, Warsaw, IfiS, 1994, Desmond Dinan, Ever Closer Union? An Introduction to the European Community, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994, and Jeremy J. Richardson, ed., European Union: Power and Policy Making, London: Routledge, 1996. 2. The Gorbachev proposal for a “Common European Home” was intended to establish close ties between the EC and CMEA, which would cooperate in Europe while maintaining ideological differences. 3. The 1980s were years of strong tensions in Europe between the two blocs as a result of the decision by NATO, in order to deny escalation dominance to the forces of the Warsaw Pact, to install Pershing and Cruise missiles in Germany and Italy. The entire controversy made it clear that in the event of war Europe would inevitably be exposed to nuclear strikes. 4. Ralf Dahrendorf, After 1989: Morals, Revolution, and Civil Society, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. 5. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, New York: Free Press, 1992. 6. Elizabeth Pond, The Rebirth of Europe, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1999 and B. Olivi, L’Europa difficile: Storia politica dell’integrazione europea 1948–2000, Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001. 7. There is a vast literature devoted to the collapse of Yugoslavia. This chapter is based on some of the most relevant works, cited in the notes that follow.
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8. The Yugoslav decisional system was based on the rule of unanimity and the right of veto. 9. See John B. Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia, New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. 10. The Polish crisis and the coup organized by the party and the military to stop the protest organized by Solidarity in 1981 set back attempts at reform within the Soviet bloc. 11. Since the beginning of the development of the “national way” of communism in the framework of People’s Democracies, Yugoslavia had played a prominent role. See François Fejto, Histoire des Démocratie Populaires, Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1969. 12. On American policy toward Yugoslavia see Lorraine M. Lees, Keeping Tito Afloat: The United States, Yugoslavia, and the Cold War, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997. 13. On the social transformation of Yugoslav society see Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia, Denison Rusinow, The Yugoslav Experiment 1948–1974, London 1977, and Sabrina Ramet, Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to Ethnic War, Boulder: Westview Press, 1996. 14. See, Susan Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995, and Stefano Bianchini and R. Craig Nation, The Yugoslav Conflict and Its Implications for International Relations, Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1998. 15. See Olivi, L’Europa difficile. 16. See James Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will. International Diplomacy and the Yugoslav War, New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. 17. E. Bond, op cit., and Woodward, Balkan Tragedy. 18. See Stefano Bianchini, Sarajevo, le radici dell’odio, 3rd ed., Rome: Edizioni Associate, 2003 and Stefano Bianchini and Paul Shoup, eds., The Yugoslav War, Europe and the Balkans: How to Achieve Security?, Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1995. 19. See, E. Bond, op. cit. 20. In the BBC documentary “The Fall of Yugoslavia” (London 1994), the premeditation of the Slovene delegation in abandoning the Congress is clearly depicted. From the outset the Slovenes wanted to avoid legitimizing the Congress as a political body of Yugoslavia leading Yugoslav reform. 21. See, Francesco Privitera, La transizione continua: L’Europa centro-orientale tra rinnovamento e conservazione (1989–1994), Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1996. 22. See Woodward, Balkan Tragedy. 23. The author was in Yugoslavia during the time of the secession of Slovenia and Croatia and conducted a serious of talks at both republic and federal levels. The sincere, democratic attitude of the Yugoslav cabinet was quite clear, despite the fact that its members had been appointed during the communist era. The long tradition of interaction between Yugoslav officials and the West must be considered. As in Hungary, the most promising
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24.
25. 26.
27.
28.
29.
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young members of the communist nomenklatura were sent to the West for a period of study and training in order to develop a “Western mind set.” See also, Dusan Janjic, Ethnic Conflict Management. The Case of Yugoslavia, Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1997. On self-determination see Francesco Privitera and Henry Huttenbach, eds., Self-Determination: From Versailles to Dayton its Historical Legacy, Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1999. Olivi, L’Europa difficile. From that moment onward Italy’s international credibility was very low. Only when Premier Romano Prodi was able to make the country eligible for inclusion in the Euro zone in 1997 was a degree of prestige restored. The Badinter Commission was appointed by the EC in 1991 in order to decide how to proceed in the recognition of the Yugoslav successor states, especially concerning the question of borders. In May 2004 the following Central European countries will become members of the European Union: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Slovenia (plus Malta and Cyprus). In 2008, Romania and Bulgaria are also scheduled to join the EU. According to formal EU definitions, the western Balkans includes Croatia, Bosnia–Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Albania. On conditionality, see Francesco Privitera, “Areas of Restricted Tension: Romania and Bulgaria,” in Stefano Bianchini, ed., From the Adriatic to the Caucasus. The Dynamics of (De)Stabilization,” Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2001.
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CHAPTER 4
The Leaky Bucket: Ethnic Albanian Cross-Border Operations in the Balkans Lawrence E. Cline
Introduction
W
ith the collapse of Yugoslavia, the issue of borders between the newly emerging states became of major international diplomatic interest. Secessionist and irredentist movements were rampant throughout the region. The international community has either acceded to or actively supported the existence of new de jure or de facto “state” borders within the former Yugoslavia after its dissolution. Beyond these formalized borders, less formal boundaries if not borders have emerged in the region. Once the new states emerged—either peacefully or through violence—international attention shifted considerably, with the focus on internal stability and development of the new states. This was particularly the case for most of the various international military forces deployed to the area. The principal operational and tactical-level missions for the multinational armed forces within the new (and newly emerging) states of the former Yugoslavia have been maintaining internal stability in their areas of operations. This constabulary style mission has received the primary focus both in the operational planning and in the preparation of units for deployment. Certainly, the maintenance of internal security and stability remains a key mission; if this effort fails, the overall international effort in the Balkans is doomed. Underlying this mission focus, however, is the assumption that all the dominoes have
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fallen into place and that the currently existing borders are reasonably stable. This assumption seemed to have been reinforced in many policy makers’ minds after the fall of Slobodan Milosˇevic´. The recent insurgent movements in western Serbia and in Macedonia cast considerable doubt on this optimistic view. Currently, the most critical—and potentially the most dangerous— border area abuts Kosovo, Serbia, and Macedonia. In late 2000, the Preˇsevo Valley border region between Kosovo and Serbia faced its most violent period since the deployment of the Kosovo Force (KFOR). In the wake of the violence, fighting broke out between insurgents and the government in Macedonia. Both rounds of combat involved significant cross-border support by allies and participants within Kosovo. The events of this period and NATO’s reaction to them deserve considerable examination because, while the active guerrilla operations in the Preˇsevo Valley and Macedonia have been contained, the area remains a potential flash point. This chapter examines the recent unrest in the particular area of eastern Kosovo, western Serbia, and northwestern Macedonia. It first discusses the insurgent operations in the Preˇsevo Valley of Serbia, and then provides a historical survey of the “Albanian” unrest in Macedonia. Particular cross-border issues affecting the goals and operations of the insurgent movements are stressed in the discussion, including the issue of “Greater Albania.” The chapter then focuses on the responses to these insurgent activities of the international security forces in the area, with particular emphasis on efforts to contain cross-border insurgent operations. It should be noted that the stress is on the operational level of military and diplomatic responses rather than on grand diplomacy or legal issues.1 The Preˇsevo Insurgency The recent insurgency in the Preˇsevo Valley region of Serbia has operational roots in the peace agreement ending NATO air operations against Serbia. Apparently, there was some concern among NATO officials at the close of Operation Allied Force and the beginning of the KFOR mission as to the possibility of Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA; also known by its Albanian initials as UÇK) cross-border operations. Paragraph 15 of the Demilitarization Agreement stated that “[w]ith immediate effect the UCK will cease the movement of armed bodies into neighbouring countries.”2 The agreement also prohibited the carrying of weapons by KLA members within two kilometers of the external
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borders of Kosovo, together with other restrictions on weapons leading eventually to KLA disarmament. At the same time, however, the principal restrictions were on Serb forces across the border from Kosovo. All Serbian security forces, to include military and internal security units, were prohibited within a five-kilometer zone on the Serbian side of the border; only lightly armed police were authorized.3 This area was labeled the Ground Safety Zone (GSZ). While the last provision made sense in the context of avoiding potential border clashes, it also created a form of “no man’s land” that could be used by groups desiring to conduct operations into Serbia. Such groups were not long in forming. In January 2000, a Kosovan insurgent group announced its existence in the Preˇsevo Valley. This group called itself the Liberation Army of Preˇsevo, Bujanovac, and Medvedja (UÇPMB in Albanian), named after the three largest Albanian-majority towns in Serbia stretching along the Kosovo–Serbia border. The area of operations was approximately 1,200 square kilometers, with a population of about 100,000, 70 percent Albanian. The stated goal of the UÇPMB was unifying the area with Kosovo. Using the advantage of the GSZ as a safe area, the UÇPMB, under the command of Shefket Musliu, conducted a series of attacks against Serbians in the Preˇsevo region and seized control of several villages in the GSZ. It should be noted that the UÇPMB likely was a coalition of smaller groups or bands. Also, attacks against Serbian interests had begun earlier than the announced formation of the UÇPMB. A post-Miloˇsevi´c government official claimed that between 21 June 1999 and 21 November 2000, the Preˇsevo Valley area experienced 296 “terrorist attacks and incursions,” including a number prior to the UÇPMB, in which five policemen and six civilians were killed, with a number of these attacks occurring before January.4 Following Miloˇsevi´c’s fall from power in October 2000, the UÇPMB launched an offensive on 22 November, in which four policemen were killed. Belgrade argued—with considerable justification—that the GSZ gave the UÇPMB virtual carte blanche in conducting their insurgency. Since the Serbian military was precluded from operating in this area, the Serbian government focused its initial counterinsurgency “campaign” on persuading NATO governments to allow it back into the GSZ. The Serbian military’s redeployment into the GSZ was carefully negotiated between Belgrade and NATO, with considerable political posturing and threats of unilateral action by Serbia.5 On 8 March 2001, NATO and Serbia agreed on a framework for a phased reduction of the GSZ. The Serbian proposal, known as the
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ˇ c Plan after Deputy Prime Minister Nebojˇsa Covi´ ˇ c, called for: Covi´ “the elimination of all kinds of threats against the constitutional-legal order . . . of the Republic of Serbia”; “the establishment of full personal and property security of all citizens . . . by the disbanding and disarmament of the terrorists [and] by the demilitarization of the region”; “the development of a multiethnic and multiconfessional society”; and “rapid economic and social development of those municipalities with international financial assistance.”6 Based both on the critical security situation in Preˇsevo and the Serbian assurances of improved rights for Serbian Albanians, NATO officials agreed to a redeployment of Serbian security forces into the GSZ. There was renewed fighting following the agreement, but on 14 May 2001, NATO stated that Serbian forces would be allowed to enter the so-called Sector B of the GSZ, where the UÇPMB was strongest.7 This announcement was coupled with a statement that there would be a general amnesty for insurgents who laid down their arms. Following the movement of Serbian troops into Sector B, unarmed Albanian guerrillas were permitted to enter Kosovo, where KFOR troops registered and photographed each one.8 Some 500 insurgents were reportedly processed through KFOR.9 As Serbian troops moved into the area, they were closely monitored by EU officials and independent observers, who found the Serbian forces’ behavior to be “professional and correct.”10 On 21 May, the UÇPMB commander promised NATO officials that he would demobilize his forces no later than 31 May, and Serbian forces completed their reoccupation of the area on 31 May. The Preˇsevo region has regained a significantly greater level of stability since the Serbian redeployment, but a number of small-scale attacks have occurred. The most serious to date has been the killing of two policemen, and wounding of two others, by a gunman on 3 August 2001. The gunman was not caught, but a previously unknown group calling itself the Albanian National Army (ANA) claimed responsibility. The Macedonian Insurgency In comparison with several other former Yugoslavian republics, Macedonia managed a relatively peaceful break from the former central government and Serbia. It did, however, face significant complications with its Albanian minority after its establishment. The ethnic Albanian population claimed—with some apparent justification—that the Slavic majority did not accord its interests sufficient weight. At the same time, however, the Skopje government, under significant internal and external
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pressures, was clearly reluctant to take actions that might be viewed as rewarding ethnic pressures. Complicating the ethnic issue in Macedonia is the fact that the divisions are not limited to the Orthodox Slavic majority versus the Islamic Albanian minority. As elsewhere in the Balkans there is a virtual kaleidoscope of minorities within Macedonia, including a number of distinct Muslim groups who are not allied with the “Albanians.”11 Even the number of ethnic Albanians in Macedonia remains contentious. Albanians boycotted the 1991 census because the forms were not printed in Albanian. They also continue to dispute the results of the 1994 census (which was overseen by international observers). Instead of the official figure of 23 percent Albanian population, Albanian political leaders insist that Albanians comprise 30–40 percent of the Macedonian population. As one author notes, “To claim a higher percentage of the total population is a crucial strategy in the struggle of ethnic Albanians for recognition as a constitutive nation.”12 One historical issue should also be noted in the case of Macedonia. For the last two centuries, its borders have been repeatedly shifted (in some periods, in fact, disappearing) so that irredentist or separatist tendencies can be justified based on historical antecedents.13 Macedonian Albanians have become increasingly active since the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Considering that they are concentrated in the critical area adjoining Kosovo and Albania, their political activities and aspirations have a major impact on potential cross-border operations. Although the Albanian operations in 2001 have received the most attention, there has been considerable Albanian political unrest since 1991. Until recently, this instability had little visible impact on foreign responses to the Balkans: “As the situation of the FYROM [Former Yugoslavia Republic of Macedonia] Albania’s [sic] was not as bad as their Kosova compatriots, their interests tended to be overlooked completely in the international arena.”14 This overall lack of attention to the Macedonian Albanians’ political interests was exacerbated by a reported perceived pro-Macedonian slant by local foreign European diplomats.15 Unrest in the area continued to grow. In 1992, government paramilitary police killed four Albanians participating in an unarmed protest. In 1993, the Skopje government arrested a number of prominent Macedonian Albanians in what the government called an armed plot to establish a secessionist state called “Illyridia.”16 In spite of—or due to— these government security crackdowns, radicalization of many Macedonian Albanians continued to increase, with a number of members of the relatively moderate Albanian Party for Democratic Prosperity
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(PDP) leaving in 1994 to form a more radical party. Government clashes with Albanian activists continued, with one Albanian killed and over 50 arrested when police tried to prevent the opening of the Albanianlanguage Tetovo University in 1995, and another three Albanians killed in 1997 during political protests. All these incidents led to increasing calls for Macedonian Albanian autonomy. Certainly, such calls for autonomy were not new. Albanian political leaders conducted a referendum (declared illegal by the Skopje government) among their population in 1992 asking whether they should be granted autonomy. A reported 74 percent favored autonomy.17 Facing internal unrest by Macedonian Albanians, the conflict in Kosovo presented yet additional challenges to the Macedonian government. Given the international support for the Kosovan resistance to the Serbian regime, Skopje seemingly had little recourse but to provide at least some support for the international effort. Nevertheless, the Macedonian government reacted very cautiously to the refugee crisis from Kosovo. Along with trying to minimize the total number of Kosovar refugees in Macedonia, Skopje also controlled their area of movement: [A]n agreement was signed . . . to control the movement of refugees through Kosova and FYROM for them to go to Albania. This “corridor” avoids running through the Albanian inhabited areas of FYROM and it is difficult to avoid the impression that the Gligorov government is anxious to avoid the creation of informal border breaches in the northwest and the Sar mountains that could threaten the delineation of the boundary between the two Albanian communities, so bringing a Greater Albania much closer as a political prospect.18
Nevertheless, the influx of Kosovan Albanian refugees into Macedonia created significant political and security stresses. Some 250,000 refugees fled into Macedonia.19 Throughout the refugee crisis, the Macedonian government displayed wildly shifting policies on border controls and admission or denial of refugees trying to cross. Similar confusion and policy divergences were displayed over treatment of the refugees once they were in Macedonia. At least part of the government’s frequently unsympathetic treatment of the refugees likely was based on a fear that a longterm influx of ethnic Albanians would tilt Macedonia’s ethnic balance. The Albanian insurgency reached a new level in 2001, with military operations increasing significantly. The Macedonian military clearly was not well prepared for an escalation of violence. To a large extent, this was a long-standing problem in military preparedness dating from the country’s independence. In 1992, following negotiations between Serbia
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and Macedonia, the 60,000 JNA troops in Macedonia were withdrawn. Although a result clearly desired by the Macedonian government, the troops withdrew with all their equipment, leaving Macedonia without a viable military capability. Despite some international assistance, the Macedonian military was still relatively weak at the start of the insurgency.20 Fighting flared in February 2001 after Macedonian security forces tried to take control of the Macedonian Albanian village of Tanuˇsevci along the Macedonia–Kosovo border. A group calling itself the National Liberation Army (NLA) led by Ali Ahmeti claimed responsibility for the insurgency. While Macedonian-based, the group included a significant number of former KLA members and took advantage of Kosovo as a safe area.21 Skirmishes and violence quickly spread throughout the Albanianmajority areas of Macedonia. Although fighting was sporadically intense and early ceasefire efforts frequently collapsed, negotiations between the parties were quickly established. In large part, this was due to active diplomatic involvement by Western powers, in marked contrast to earlier Balkan history. A critical component of the peace agreement finally hammered out—which involved a series of constitutional changes designed to improve the treatment of ethnic Albanians and amnesties in return for NLA disarmament—was active NATO involvement in the disarmament process, to be discussed below. There have been significant difficulties in gaining the cooperation of many Macedonian politicians in passing the necessary political measures to meet the terms of the ceasefire arrangements, but after a number of delays and strong political opposition, the government generally has met its requirements.22 The September 2002 elections provided some grounds for optimism. After a more moderate Macedonian party won the elections, former Albanian guerrilla leaders were invited into the government. There also were pledges that the Macedonian army would increase the number of serving Albanians.23 It is far from clear that these measures have placated the extremists on either side. Security in Macedonia remains problematic. After the NLA announced its renunciation of violence, a group calling itself the ANA emerged and called for continued struggle. Although clearly a fringe group, the ANA has claimed credit for some small-scale attacks. Also, even while amnesties of former insurgents are underway, continued low-level incidents continue to be reported.24 Albania and “Greater Albania” One contentious issue in the analysis of ethnic Albanian unrest has been the issue of “Greater Albania.” Certainly, at least some Albanian insurgent leaders have called for the creation of an Albanian nation-state that
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encompasses the entirety of the ethnic Albanian population in the region. The brothers who founded the KLA in 1991, Adem and Hamza Jashari, stressed the formation of a Greater Albania.25 Other more recent Kosovar politicians such as Rexhep Qosja have also called for a union between Kosovo and Albania.26 Others have called for at least an expansion of Kosovo to include other former Yugoslavian Albanian-majority areas or “Greater Kosovo.” For instance, one expatriate Albanian KLA fund-raiser and supporter stated, “Kosova starts in Tivar [Montenegro] and ends in Manastir [Macedonia]. We don’t care what America and England think about it, we should unite with actions, not with words.”27 For some, Kosovo, with its generally higher living standards and financial support from overseas Albanians, is in fact the logical core of an Albanian nation.28 It would certainly appear to be the case that such expansionist sentiments were shown by the operations in Preˇsevo. Likewise, at least some of the Kosovars who have fought in Macedonia were likely to have been motivated by similar goals. In this case, however, it is very difficult to separate out expansionist motivations versus a desire to support co-ethnics and relatives in their conflict. The “Greater Albania” (or even “Greater Kosovo”) rhetoric has not necessarily been taken particularly seriously by lower level insurgents, however. Reporting from the area suggests that most members and supporters of the Macedonian insurgency have been much more concerned with what are essentially local issues. Even the NLA leadership in its Military Communiqué number 6 in March 2001 stressed that the group did not want to create a “Greater Albania” and did not want to “damage the integrity of the Macedonian state.”29 Varying forms and levels of autonomy have been the most commonly expressed end state. Tim Judah suggests one reason why many Kosovan Albanians may have soured on such a concept: Five hundred thousand Albanian Kosovars were sheltered [in Albania] during the period of the NATO bombing . . . and while they appreciated the welcome, the experience also shattered any enduring myths about “Mother Albania.” Kosovars were shocked by the poverty and the corruption of the country they had grown up idealizing and there was bitterness too when many of the refugees were robbed . . . So, for many, independence is increasingly seen as an end in itself rather than an interim stop on the way to uniting all Albanians in one state.30
Likewise, the Albanian government in recent years has eschewed the concept of “Greater Albania.” While stating its interest in the development
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of Kosovo as a foreign policy “priority,” Tirana has stressed its opposition to expansionist goals. The official Albanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs position deserves quoting at some length: . . . [the] Albanian Government has been forced to cope with a growing propaganda about alleged plans for creation of so-called “Greater Albania.” This thesis is not new. It is an old product of Serb propaganda to justify its anti-Albanian policy . . . Unfortunately, this idea has also struck root in some diplomatic and political environments due to different causes and reasons, such as lack of maturity on the part of some Kosova Albanian politicians, some extreme nationalist stands adopted by some political elements in Albania, and the intensity made by Belgrade and its supporters throughout the world. Albanian diplomacy has been and will remain committed to refute this dangerous thesis with convincing arguments, making it clear that it runs counter to existing realities and the official platform of the Albanian Government and State, and that it has found no backing from Albanian political factors in Kosova, Macedonia, and Montenegro.31
Tirana has displayed similar official attitudes toward the events in Macedonia. Although stressing the need for negotiations over the demands of the Macedonian Albanians, the Albanian government has generally taken a pro-Macedonian government position.32 In general, it seems fair to conclude that the major Albanian (whether state or ethnic) players in the region do not accept the concept of “Greater Albania,” both on ideological and practical grounds. Such a goal is largely confined to fringe elements that do not appear to possess the critical mass to have significant impact on the region, although such individuals and groups can of course create a degree of instability.33 Beyond the rhetoric of “Greater Albania,” Albania has had an impact on the events in Kosovo and Macedonia. Some discussion of the period preceding the NATO intervention in Kosovo is important in understanding current developments. In the early 1990s, a small group of Kosovan Albanians received military training in Albania, but there is little suggestion that such training was extensive either in terms of numbers of personnel trained or in the effectiveness of the training.34 Such training apparently was reduced in 1992, however, when Sali Berisha came to power in Albania. Although some very limited training likely was provided, Berisha made a very deliberate policy decision to do nothing to provoke Serbia. Of considerably greater impact was the training of Kosovars in Albania at the start of the war in Kosovo. Agim Çeku, putative commander of the KLA, reported that some 8,000 Kosovans were in Albania receiving training at that time.35
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Internal factors in Albania played a more direct role in Kosovo and Macedonian stability. The economic meltdown in Albania in 1996–97 significantly affected the Macedonian economy since one of the larger Macedonian banks had invested in the Albanian pyramid schemes. With its collapse as a result, reported “tens of thousands” of Macedonians— including a large percentage of Macedonian Albanians—lost all their savings.36 More directly, the looting of armories in Albania during the 1997 uprising led to a wave of available weapons in the area on both sides of the Albanian–Macedonian border and on the Albania–Kosovo border. The KLA reportedly received the bulk of its weapons from looted Albanian armories.37 Given the absence of any Albanian border security forces on their side of the border during this period, smuggling of all types (including weaponry) almost certainly intensified. Parenthetically, it should be noted that a similar phenomenon was noted earlier along the Serbian–Macedonian border following UN sanctions against Yugoslavia.38 The security breakdown also reportedly increased the activities and influence of organized crime in the area.39 The International Military Response Before Miloˇsevi´c’s fall, NATO expressed little concern as to potential insurgent operations across the border between Kosovo and Serbia. In fact, NATO officials accused Miloˇsevi´c of attempting to stir up trouble both in Kosovo proper and in the Preˇsevo region.40 What interest NATO expressed in the Kosovo–Serbia border mostly centered on precluding covert infiltrations by Serbian agitators. At the same time, however, there was little planning by the NATO forces for actually controlling the Kosovo border. Of the five principal missions noted by the KFOR commander from October 1999 to April 2000, none involved border control outward.41 In response to the guerrilla attacks in the Preˇsevo region, NATO publicly adopted a six-point program to control the activities of the UÇPMB. This program included: a psychological operations campaign against violence in Preˇsevo; the use of more moderate Kosovo Albanian politicians to try to curb the guerrillas; increased contacts between Preˇsevo Albanians and Serb officials; closer KFOR contacts with Serb police; increased intelligence and surveillance along the border; and increased monitoring of violence in the demilitarized zone.42 Taken together with the negotiated reentry of Serbian security forces into the GSZ, these efforts represented a clear tilt toward the Serbians on the issue of Preˇsevo. The tilt was sufficiently sharp, in fact, that KFOR felt
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obliged to issue a press release denying rumors that Serbian police would be beginning patrols with KFOR in Kosovo while wearing “KFOR uniforms.”43 At the operational level, the most significant KFOR activities consisted of increasing border patrols and surveillance. This included establishing new checkpoints and observation towers along the border. According to press reports, the US component—whose sector was critical in border control—was not terribly responsive initially to the new border requirements. General Klaus Reinhardt, the KFOR commander from the Bundeswehr, was quoted as stating that “he had pushed the Americans hard to seal the boundary between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia.”44 In some ways, however, the new border posts initially may have been counterproductive, since at least some Preˇsevo Albanians reportedly believed that the posts were designed to deter Serbian forces from responding to UÇPMB attacks.45 Nevertheless, over time, these increased border measures did at least reduce some of the free movement across the Kosovo–Serbia border, even though all observers on the ground (to include KFOR commanders) noted that the terrain in the area made it impossible to completely seal the border. Together with these border measures, detention of suspected guerrillas, and seizure of weapons, KFOR also began to take a much tougher rhetorical line against insurgents operating from or providing support through Kosovo. In the case of operations across the Kosovo–Serbia border, NATO Secretary-General Lord George Robertson in November 2000 referred to the guerrillas as “extremists.”46 Before discussing the post–Operation Allied Force international military response to the insecurity in Macedonia, it is worth noting one earlier international effort. As previously noted, Macedonia entered its postindependence period virtually without a military. After Skopje’s appeals to the UN for some form of security guarantor for Macedonia, the UN Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP) was deployed. Although a small force of only about 1,000 troops, it proved an effective deterrent. One probable factor in increasing the credibility of this force was the inclusion of US troops. UNPREDEP is widely (and largely justifiably) considered a major success in its mission of avoiding spillover from the Bosnian conflict.47 One of the most important aspects of this force was its role in policing the border between Serbia and Macedonia in 1992–93 when the actual border trace was hazy at best. This was particularly crucial during the period when Macedonian Serbs living along the border began making noises about separatism.48 UNPREDEP was withdrawn from Macedonia in 1998 after Chinese
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objections. What, if any, effect this mission might have had in reducing instability in Macedonia in 2001 if it had continued its mandate is an interesting might-have-been. NATO responded to the Macedonian insurgency on two fronts. First was the role of KFOR. During the upsurge in NLA operations in Macedonia, there was significant movement of both weapons and combatants across the border. After some apparent initial KFOR hesitation in responding to these cross-border movements, it became very active in efforts to stem the flow of men and materiel. KFOR headquarters deployed additional troops to the Kosovo–Macedonia border, together with increased aerial reconnaissance.49 Such efforts resulted in a marked increase in weapons seizures and detentions of suspects.50 Together with these practical measures, NATO officials also ratcheted up their rhetoric against the Macedonian insurgents, with NATO SecretaryGeneral Lord Robertson for example reportedly calling them “murderous thugs.”51 Likewise, Lieutenant General Thorstein Skiaker, the NATO commander in Kosovo, stated on 13 August 2001 that the NLA and its supporters (presumably in Kosovo) “must be marginalized.”52 NATO elements also assumed responsibility for disarming members of the NLA; the activation of what was called Operation Essential Harvest was marked by considerable political turmoil between the Macedonian government and NATO. Although the mission plan was completed and approved by the North Atlantic Council on 29 June 2001, its execution was contingent upon four preconditions in Macedonia: a political agreement signed by parliamentary leaders; a status of forces agreement for the NATO troops; an agreed plan for weapons collection, to include an “explicit agreement” by the insurgents to disarm; and an “enduring” cease-fire.53 It was not until 15 August that the parties reconciled their differences sufficiently that NATO authorized the deployment of the headquarters of Task Force Harvest. The actual weapons collection process lasted from 27 August to 26 September. Approximately 3,500 NATO troops were involved in Essential Harvest.54 The force collected over 3,000 weapons from Albanian insurgents. A number of Macedonian politicians expressed doubts that the guerrillas turned in all or even the majority of their weapons. Such skepticism likely is well founded since it is very doubtful that the Albanians would give up all their arms.55 Even while Operation Essential Harvest was ongoing, a number of NATO governments expressed concerns as to the brevity of the operation and fears about instability in Macedonia after the departure of the NATO troops. Parenthetically, it should be noted that KFOR has
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a number of troops garrisoned in Macedonia, but they have remained largely separated from security duties in Macedonia. As a result, after a series of frequently contentious negotiations, a new NATO force was authorized for the country. This new operation was called Amber Fox. The principal mission of Task Force Fox, consisting of about 700 troops, was to provide security for international monitors overseeing the Macedonian peace arrangements. 56 The mission was subsequently renewed, and in March 2003 EU forces stepped in to assume the role of NATO troops.57 The United States also took some unilateral diplomatic and economic measures against Albanian insurgent groups. In June 2001, Washington barred entry into the United States of the commanders of the NLA and froze any of their US-based assets. In December, similar measures were taken against the ANA, together with a purported front group, the National Committee for the Liberation and Defense of Albanian Lands.58 Further, on 15 October, US officials reportedly told Albanian leaders in Priˇstina that “any provocative acts by armed Albanian groups would be seen as support for terrorism.”59 One somewhat murky aspect of the foreign response to the operations conducted by former KLA fighters in Preˇsevo is the role of the United States in initially supporting these forces. According to several sources, while Miloˇsevi´c was still in power in Serbia, the CIA was active in supporting and training Kosovan insurgents in launching missions into southern Serbia. The intention reportedly was to destabilize the regime, but this motivation of course disappeared once Miloˇsevi´c fell from power. Unfortunately, the Albanians who purportedly had been trained by the United States had an agenda different from their American trainers and operations intensified rather than ended upon the change of regime. According to a European KFOR battalion commander, “the CIA has been allowed to run riot in Kosovo with a private army designed to overthrow Milosevic. Now he’s gone, the US State Department seems incapable of reining in its bastard army.”60 Evidence of direct covert US support for the cross-border operations is circumstantial at best, but such support (at least in its initial stages) was at least perceived by a number of actors and observers.61 At the very least, during the Miloˇsevi´c regime, local Albanians along both sides of the Kosovo–Serbia border expressed the belief that any Serbian assaults against the insurgents would result in a US–NATO military response.62 Similarly, during the upsurge in violence in Macedonia, some Macedonian government officials accused the United States and NATO of supporting the insurgents.63 In this case, however, it should
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be noted that there is a US company, Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI), with close links to the Defense Department (its personnel are predominantly retired senior officers and noncommissioned officers) in Macedonia training its military. Although the training provided is not directly linked to counterinsurgency operations, it is designed to make the Macedonian army more effective in all operational aspects.64 Also, NATO reportedly provided intelligence support to the Macedonian government.65 Conclusions Clearly, the scope and severity of the insurgencies in Preˇsevo and Macedonia pale in comparison with earlier Balkan wars. Nevertheless, they are very significant for several reasons. Most importantly, the insurgent movements represent a threat to the international efforts to maintain the new status quo for the former Yugoslavia. With the (partial) exception of Kosovo, international and regional organizations clearly view the current geographical situation in the Balkans as the best attainable in the near term. Cross-border operations that potentially threaten this status can be very destabilizing. It is far from clear that the majority of the Albanian fighters, particularly in Macedonia, ascribe to secessionist or irredentist goals. The Preˇsevo insurgents, on the other hand, certainly do seem to have such motivations. The historical existence of ideologies calling for a “Greater Albania” or “Greater Kosovo” are sufficient to give existing governments in the region considerable concern as to the ultimate goals of such insurgencies. Given Balkan history, ethno-national ideologies by their very nature can prove to be highly destabilizing. The NATO tilt toward the Serbian and Macedonian governments in response to the insurgencies can also prove to be problematic. The degree to which the Albanian insurgents view this as a form of betrayal could impact on the level of their cooperation with KFOR. A feeling of betrayal would, of course, be exacerbated if the speculation is correct that some of the Preˇsevo insurgents had been part of a covert anti-Miloˇsevi´c program. Although a Kosovan Albanian direct insurgent campaign against KFOR troops is unlikely, many of KFOR’s missions rely on at least some level of cooperation by the Kosovans for success. An active campaign by disgruntled Kosovan Albanians who no longer trust KFOR or NATO could seriously complicate KFOR’s operations in the province. Ultimately, of course, the insurgencies in Macedonia and Preˇsevo have been conducted by what may be considered fringe elements.
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Unfortunately, given the history of instability in the Balkans, even fringe elements can play a highly significant role. At the time of writing, both movements have been essentially controlled, but neither has been extirpated. Ethnic Albanian guerrilla movements, particularly in the critical border region around Kosovo, Serbia, and Macedonia, can have an impact far out of proportion to their numbers. Particularly worrisome is the evidence of active cooperation and cross-membership between the insurgent groups. Some of this can of course be ascribed to a common history of KLA membership, but such links can be used to maintain at least a cadre of guerrilla leaders and potential safe areas across borders. The insurgent movements around the borders of Kosovo likely should remain of significant security concern to the international community for some time to come. Notes 1. One note on terminology should be mentioned. The term “border” is used for the demarcation of Kosovo, although it is of course technically still a provincial boundary. Also, the chapter uses the name of “Serbia” even though it is formally a rump part of former Yugoslavia or the current Serbia–Montenegro union. 2. Agence France-Presse, Text of the Demilitarization Agreement, 21 June 1999, published by the New York Times, www.nytimes.com/library/world/Europe/ afp-kla-nato-text. 3. For details of the withdrawal agreement, see Associated Press, Text of Military Technical Agreement, 10 June 1999, www.nytimes.com/library/w . . . / 061099kosovo-military-text. 4. International Crisis Group, Peace in Presevo: Quick Fix or Long Term Solution? ICG Balkans Report Number 16, 10 August 2001, p. 3. 5. For reporting on Serbian–NATO public diplomacy (which began early in the insurgency) over the GSZ, see Associated Press, “Serbia Official Gives NATO Deadline,” 24 November 2000; Aleksandar Vasovic, Associated Press, “NATO Postpones NATO Deadline,” 27 November 2000; Associated Press, “Yugoslav General Claims Incursions,” 28 November 2000; Carlotta Gall, “NATO Won’t Allow Serbian Use of Force in Three-Mile Buffer,” the New York Times, 15 December 2000. During this period, the Serbian government seemingly approached the issue with a “good cop–bad cop” routine, with some officials threatening unilateral action while others publicly urged patience. 6. Quoted in ICG, Peace in Presevo, p. 5. 7. For NATO’s operational conditions on Serbian reentry, see KFOR News Release, “Re-entry of FRY Forces into the Ground Safety Zone,” Pristina, 20 May 2001. It should be noted that fighting intensified as the NATO council was meeting to decide whether to permit Serbian troops to deploy to Sector B. 8. BBC, 24 May 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk.
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9. Malcolm Brabant, “Eyewitness: Inside Presevo Valley,” BBC, 24 May 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk. 10. ICG, Peace in Presevo, p. 10. 11. For a survey of the Macedonian Muslim populations—including Torbeˇsi, Turks, Roma, and “Egyptians,” see Hugh Poulton, “Non-Albanian Muslim Minorities in Macedonia,” in James Pettifer, ed., The New Macedonian Question, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999, pp. 107–25. 12. Alice Ackermann, Making Peace Prevail: Preventing Violent Conflict in Macedonia, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000, p. 64. 13. For a series of maps showing the series of modern borders of Macedonia, see Pettifer, The New Macedonian Question, pp. xxxiii–xxxv. 14. James Pettifer, “The Albanians in Western Macedonia After FYROM Independence,” in Pettifer, The New Macedonian Question, p. 138. 15. Ibid., p. 140. 16. Ackermann, Making Peace Prevail, p. 89, argues that the proclamation of the “Republic of Ilrida” was the “action of a handful of ethnic Albanian extremists.” 17. Ackermann, Making Peace Prevail, p. 61. The Albanian referendum was particularly irritating to Slavic Macedonians since the Albanians had boycotted the 1991 referendum on Macedonian independence. 18. Ibid., p. 146. 19. The true number is very difficult to accurately estimate, since many refugees stayed with relatives or unrelated Macedonian Albanians instead of formally registering as refugees. 20. Duncan Perry, “Macedonia’s Quest for Security and Stability,” Current History, No. 99/635, March 2000, p. 133, cites a figure of 11,000–12,000 troops plus some minimal reserves for the Macedonian military. The country also received military equipment donations from Germany and Bulgaria. 21. BBC, 21 November 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk. In May, British officials reportedly intercepted communications from guerrilla leaders in Preˇsevo offering to provide 1,000 troops to the NLA. BBC, 21 May 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk. It is not known how many, if any, of the insurgents actually made it to Macedonia. 22. For further details of the political complications involved in passing these measures, see
[email protected], “Security Watch,” September–November 2001. Also, BBC, 21 November 2001, http://news. bbc.co.uk. Many of the promised reforms and constitutional changes have faced significant opposition in parliament. On 20 December 2001 the Macedonian government amnestied the final nine insurgents that it considered eligible for amnesty. The total number amnestied was 64 out of a total of 88 names initially submitted. Reuters, “Macedonia Pardons Last Nine Ethnic Albanian Rebels,” 20 December 2001. 23. The inclusion of some former guerrilla leaders in the government particularly enraged Macedonian nationalists, with some Albanians also expressing the attitude that the Albanians in government would be marginalized.
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24.
25.
26. 27. 28.
29. 30. 31.
32.
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Albanians also agreed to halt their boycott of service in the Macedonian military. See International Relations and Security Network, “Macedonia: Former Rebels Become Ministers,” 29 October 2002, and “Albanians Drop Boycott of Macedonian Army,” 15 November 2002, isn.ethz.ch. An example is the killing of an Albanian reported on 14 December 2001. Police claimed he fired at them while trying to run a roadblock; local Albanians claimed that he was shot without provocation. Reuters, “Macedonia Pardons 11 Rebels But New Tension Stirs,” 14 December 2001. More recent reports also suggest continued low-level violence, including the killing of two ethnic Albanians in April 2002. As with many such incidents (also included in the story are reports of unprovoked beatings of other Albanians), the significance of the reports is less their truth or falsity, but rather as a marker for simmering tensions. The actual goals of the KLA have been debated by outside observers, especially the desire of the leadership for a Greater Albania versus autonomy or independence. Miron Rezun, Europe’s Nightmare: The Struggle for Kosovo, Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001, p. 55 argues that Greater Albania has in fact been the “basic tenet.” Tim Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000, p. 301. Ibid., pp. 103–4. See the discussion on this attitude in Kosovo, Independent International Commission on Kosovo, Kosovo Report: Conflict, International Response, Lessons Learned, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 239–41. Paul Wood, “The Rebels’ Agenda,” BBC, 11 March 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk. Judah, War and Revenge, pp. 301–2. See www.mfa.gov.al. The statement is undated, but was issued after KFOR’s deployment and before Miloˇsevi´c’s fall. For an earlier Albanian assessment focusing on security issues see Brigadier General Ali Koceku, “Albania and its Security Policy in the Context of Cooperation with Western Institutions for Regional Stability,” Foreign Military Studies Office, Ft. Leavenworth, KS, August 1995. Koceku was the Commandant of the Albanian Academy of Defense. See the series of official Foreign Ministry statements, 2001, at www.mfa.gov.al. Of particular interest is the statement of 30 January 2001, in which Tirana condemns the killing of Macedonian police officers. One underlying motivation for Albanian support for the Macedonian government likely is the fact that ethnic Albanian parties are in fact part of the governing coalition in Skopje. For a discussion of this coalition see Institute for International Strategic Studies, “Ethnic Tensions in Macedonia: Between Coexistence and Conflict,” Strategic Comments, Vol. 7, No. 3, April 2001. For a more pessimistic assessment, stressing the appeal of a “Greater Kosovo” and the legal weaknesses of the borders around Kosovo, see
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35.
36. 37.
38.
39.
40. 41.
42.
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Stefan Troebst, “From Bar to Bitola?” Central Europe Review, Vol. 3, No. 26 (24 September 2001, www.ce-review.org). Also, it should be noted that there are a number of ethnic Albanian émigré groups, at least some of which push the concept of one Albanian people. Some of these groups have been heavily involved in political and financial support for all the ethnic Albanian insurgencies from Kosovo onward. For a profile of the activities of one such group, see Claire Doole, “The Albanian Fund-raising Machine,” BBC, 28 May 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk. Judah, War and Revenge, pp. 111–15. As a sidebar, it should be noted that a number of Kosovan Albanians also served with the Croatian military during the war with Serbia, receiving further military training. Judah, War and Revenge, p. 282. Çeku claimed that his forces received no practical support from any NATO countries. As discussed later, some alleged US covert anti-Miloˇsevi´c support for Kosovars after the war would cast some doubt on this claim. Also, given the economic crisis faced by Albania during this period, it is difficult to see how Albania could afford direct assistance. Rezun, Europe’s Nightmare, p. 142. Ibid., p. 55. Judah, War and Revenge, p. 129, states that the KLA was buying AK-47s for five dollars apiece, indicating just how available weapons were. The problem of these looted military weapons remained significant at least through mid-2002. See International Relations and Security Network, “Albania Still Awash with Looted Weapons,” 6 November 2002, www.isn.ethz.ch. Nina Dobrkovic, “Yugoslavia and Macedonia in the Years 1991–6: From Brotherhood to Neighbourhood,” in Pettifer, The New Macedonian Question, p. 89. Ibid., p. 143. The issue of organized crime is significant for two reasons. In the Balkans (as elsewhere), organized criminal groups frequently have found internal instability to be good for business, and will actively support insurgent groups. Second, criminal groups commonly have well-established smuggling routes, which are just as valuable for transiting men and weapons as they are for illegal goods. Jane Perlez, “NATO Says Milosevic Incites Violence Covertly in Kosovo,” the New York Times, 23 February 2000. Klaus Reinhardt, “KFOR Peacekeeping in Kosovo,” Internationale Politik, No. 2, Summer 2001, pp. 48–9. The missions listed were prevention of a return by Yugoslav armed forces; improvement of personal security for Kosovans; demilitarization of the KLA; coordination of UNMIK; and humanitarian assistance. This mission set was in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1244 authorizing the mission. The only mention of border security in 1244 was the call for “Conducting border monitoring duties as required.” Association of Former Intelligence Officers, Weekly Intelligence Notes, 1 December 2000,
[email protected].
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43. KFOR News Release, “No Yugoslav Troops in Kosovo,” Pristina, 21 September 2001. 44. Steven Erlanger, “Kosovo Rebels Regrouping Nearby in Serbia,” the New York Times, 2 March 2000. 45. Ibid. 46. NATO Update 29 November–5 December 2000, www.nato.int/docu/ update/2000/1129. 47. For example, see Sophia Clement, “Former Yugoslav Macedonia, the Regional Setting and European Security: Towards Balkan Stability?” in Pettifer, The New Macedonian Question, pp. 285–302. 48. For details see Ackermann, Making Peace Prevail, pp. 85–7. The height of Serbian activism was in 1992–93. 49. KFOR Press Release, “Statement by General Cecchi, DCOM KFOR Operation Eagle 1,” Pristina, 8 June 2001, www.kforonline.com. For a description of these operations at the tactical level, see Lt. Dieter Ortmeyer, Jr., “The Fate of Illegal Border Crossers,” 27 September 2001, www.kforonline.com/news/reports. 50. For example, between June and mid-August 2001, KFOR elements detained 484 persons trying to cross the border, together with 626 rifles, 56 crew-served weapons, and 1058 anti-tank weapons. KFOR News Release, Pristina, 13 August 2001, www.kforonline.com. Beyond the seizures along the border, weapons seizures within Kosovo itself have of course served the dual purpose of preventing their use within Kosovo as well as being smuggled across borders. As of December 2000, KFOR claimed to have removed over 15,000 weapons from circulation; NATO Ministerial, “Final Communiqué,” 5 December 2000. KFOR regularly reports on weapons seizures at www.kforonline.com. 51. See
[email protected], “Security Watch,” 7 May 2001. For somewhat more diplomatic, but nonetheless strongly worded, condemnations of the NLA, see inter alia NATO Secretary-General’s Press Releases of 21 March and 24 May 2001. 52. KFOR News Release, Pristina, 13 August 2001, www.kforonline.com. 53. Allied Forces South, “Task Force Harvest Mission,” www.afsouth.nato.int. 54. For details of force composition, see www.afsouth.nato.int. 55. Further evidence for a lack of complete disarmament is that the Macedonian security forces have reported finding arms caches in Albanian areas, and there have been reports of “nightly” weapons firing, apparently unconnected with the insurgency. “World Briefing: Macedonia: Army Turns Up Rebel Arms Cache,” the New York Times, 12 October 2001; Mark Heinrich, “Macedonia Rebels Lay Low in Enclaves, Await Amnesty,” Reuters, 4 December 2001. 56. For details of force operations and composition, see “Task Force Fox,” afsouth.nato.int. 57. A minor diplomatic furor erupted in November 2002 when France initially blocked extension of the NATO mandate in an effort to have the EU take
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64.
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over the mission more quickly. After some (apparently heated) talks, France agreed to extend NATO’s mandate for six months, with the proviso that if the EU was ready to take over in February it would. Reuters, “U.S. Bars Ethnic Albanian Radicals, Freezes Assets,” 4 December 2001. International Crisis Group, “Bin Laden and the Balkans: The Politics of Antiterrorism,” 9 November 2001 (Executive Summary, p. 2), www.crisisweb.org. Quoted in Brendan O’Shea, “Macedonia on the Brink?” Peacekeeping and International Relations, Vol. 30, No. 4, April–September 2001, p. 5. For example, see the comments in the ICG Report, Peace in Presevo, p. 3. For example, see Steven Erlanger, “Kosovo Rebels Regrouping Nearby in Serbia,” the New York Times, 2 March 2000. STRATFOR, “Macedonia Accuses NATO of Siding with Militants,” 26 July 2001, www.stratfor.com, provides a survey of Macedonian charges. Also, see the interview with Boris Trajkovski, the Macedonian President, by Sam Vaknin in Central Europe Review, Vol. 3, No. 26, 24 September 2001, www.ce-review.org., in which Trajkovski discusses some of the roots of Macedonian suspicions of NATO. For MPRI’s synopsis of its training mission, see www.mpri.com. O’Shea, “Macedonia On the Brink,” p. 5, claims that MPRI also trained the KLA. The company, which normally is very open as to current and past training missions, does not claim any connection with the KLA. It has operated and continues to run a major contract with the Croat military, and may well have trained some Kosovans connected with the Croatians during the war. For this (rather vague) connection, see Judah, War and Revenge, p. 282. BBC, 21 May 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk.
CHAPTER 5
Media and Communications Systems in the Balkan Conflicts Peter W. Reynolds
Introduction
T
he Balkan conflicts of the last decade have been as much about winning the information war as defeating a physical opponent. The communications revolution has allowed the global society to become intimately involved in events it may otherwise have ignored. The main protagonists have used information much like any other weapons in their armories.1 Over time the physical confrontations have given way to politicking, but the information battles continue to be waged by all sides varying only in their intensity as they reflect the events of the moment and attempts to drive the competing agenda. The media have played and continue to play an integral role in delivering information to a wider audience and in helping to shape opinions, and possibly policies, both locally and around the world.2 Like the principal actors in these conflicts, they have also received their share of the blame for contributing to the ongoing crisis and a perceived lack of progress. Accusations of bias have been leveled from all sides at the Western press, but were they willing conspirators, acting within a framework, defined by the “dominant institutions,” or are they also victims of other forces over which they have little or no control?3 What has been the role and effect of the Balkan media? This chapter will show that the involvement of, and pressure from, international and national news media, and the use of other communications systems such as the Internet, has not brought about major fundamental changes in Balkan politics and political systems, although
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there have been some successes at the margins. The traditional political elites in the Balkans have, with one major exception, been able to retain power and maintain the status quo, which seems to indicate that media and communications do not have the ability to influence Balkan audience behavior and culture to the same extent as Western audiences, as some theorists contend. One theoretical perspective is that all communications and thus information and knowledge are the precursors to actions. There is little question that the media play a part in the shaping of policy and that they are not always acting as a mirror for the reality they see.4 Particularly in conflict situations journalists find it difficult to maintain an objective professional detachment from their subject, and thus in the eyes of some observers they and their product become tainted.5 If the product is tainted then the consumer is unlikely to be able to rely on what he or she hears, sees, or reads. However, the average Western consumer, and indeed a sizeable proportion of the Balkan population, are not reliant on a single source for information and are able to reach many providers, for example by using a radio or the Internet, if they wish to avail themselves of these resources. This chapter will consider briefly the various international media that have dealt with the Balkan crisis, their role and the influences that may have shaped their attitudes. Has their role changed over time and are the media part of the problem or the solution? Has technology affected their performance and generally accepted standards of reporting? Finally I will briefly consider the impact of information warfare, perception management, and the Balkan media. These subjects continue to be relevant while the various crises in the Balkans continue to ebb and flow, as the many national and ethnic factions seek to establish some political or economic advantage. At the same time the international community continues to try to provide leadership and guidance in the hope of achieving political stability and settlements, based on democratic institutions and self-sustaining economies. Background Throughout the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s most mainstream Western media fully supported the campaigns against Yugoslavia once the decision to do something was taken. However, numerous commentators agree that it took a long time to move Western governments to make a commitment. As James Gow noted in 1997, it was a “triumph of a lack of will” that despite the images on CNN and other television outlets,
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and the coverage of events in the printed media both European and North American governments held back from direct intervention for so long.6 At the same time the international press has been castigated for blatant unfairness in that they were thought to have taken sides from the outset and had concentrated on Serb aggression while apparently ignoring anti-Serb acts of barbarism.7 In addition to this criticism they were also accused of selective reporting in that not all the geographically diverse scenes of conflict were given equitable coverage. This would seem harsh as the many widely dispersed battles and events were never likely to be reported with the same intensity. The mainstream news organizations just did not have sufficient resources available or in place and they could not possibly provide the sort of blanket coverage that is common when addressing events in a strictly confined space and for a limited period. Not unnaturally, in those countries where fear of US hegemony is high, the media did not wholeheartedly support the policies of NATO members and were much more critical in their reporting of events and policies. Even within NATO member countries there were times when the mainstream media were less than fulsome in their support of their government policies. In Greece, for example, not only the media but also members of the government were critical of the United States and NATO both in the run-up to and during the Kosovo air campaign. Hammond and Herman provide further examples from other parts of the world, where public and government hostility toward NATO actions was reflected widely in the media.8 For those who cared to look further than their national sources of information, there were other channels of news and information, not least in the Serbian media. New Technologies While the traditional forms of communication continue to be very important within the region, those living in other parts of the world have been able to use the newer technologies to gain information to better effect. Here, for example, the Internet has played its part in bringing events to an ever-growing audience.9 Not only through the exchange of email between those who lived in the former Yugoslavia and correspondents around the world, but also by using the Serbian websites that could be accessed from outside the region. Radio B92, for example, maintained a dissenting voice against the policies of Slobodan Miloˇsevi´c for several years by using its OpenNet website.10 A number of attempts were made by the government to prevent access but by using mirror
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sites in other countries the information was still available to a global audience. Using tapes, the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe also rebroadcast B92’s programs from outside the country at a time when its own transmitters were closed by the incumbent regime. The Internet continues to be a most powerful tool and most governments recognize it as such. The challenge for governments is its decentralized nature, which makes it almost impossible to control. This lack of control is also evident in the rise of the citizen journalist or as Nik Gowing calls him or her, “Robohack.”11 The arrival of cheap video technology has transformed the capability of the average citizen to contribute to the surfeit of information that is available. A video camera was all it took to severely embarrass the Los Angeles Police Department and the same has happened numerous times to governments and international organizations when wrestling with the challenges in the Balkans over the last decade.12 Thus the Balkan conflicts have seen the involvement of the traditional media and also a new form of information gatherers and disseminators who have used the new technologies to good effect. Unlike the traditional media, where presses could be closed, radio and television transmitters shut down, or pressure brought to bear on editors, these new cyber journalists work outside the confines of mainstream journalism, where journalistic ethics are unknown and occasionally derided. While it was relatively easy for NATO to affect the transmission capability of the state organs in Serbia by destroying the transmitters, it is much more difficult to get all the Western media, who have an established tradition of independence, to pull stories produced by “Robohacks” that might prove embarrassing. The conflict between a journalist’s desire to report on events and to speculate as to future actions and the necessity of retaining military plans and operations secure has not changed. However, it has been recognized by most alliance militaries and the US forces in particular that some control, through interaction, is better than no control.13 While this addresses the mainstream media it does not adequately deal with a keen and hungry “Robohack” who is willing to take risks in conflict areas. This new breed of journalist is able to capture images and words with minimal equipment and support that can be aired almost immediately. And it is this immediacy and independence that make life so difficult for the protagonists at the highest level on all sides. Both official governmental and military reporting chains suffer from time delays in their information collection, collation, and assessment cycles that tend to give the media a sustained advantage. NATO’s bombing on 1 May 1999 of
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a bus on a bridge in Kosovo killing 23 people and NATO’s subsequent inability to confirm or deny the story until 24 hours later is just one example.14 The TV networks feel the need for immediacy most acutely. They must meet the demands of the audience (and not forgetting their advertisers) for stories that will attract attention and be new and interesting. Critics argue that the competitive nature of their environment forces them to abandon traditional values such as checking stories and events for accuracy in order to beat the opposition. This in turn has increased the need for governments to respond quickly in some way to what may be distorted images of dramatic events that may not reflect the context in which they were taken. The images of the “Raˇcak massacre” in Kosovo (January 1999) proved a powerful motivator in subsequent political actions but did they show the whole story?15 The new technologies take advantage of the fact that images can be much more powerful that the written or spoken word. Joanna Neumann addresses just what sort of effect they can have on the viewing public and policy makers.16 Suffice it to say that images have underpinned the role of the media in the Balkans when delivering news and information to all audiences and have been credited with helping to bring about changes in foreign policy.17 The Media: Help or Hindrance? Friend or Foe? Accepted wisdom inclines to the view that the very presence of cameras and journalists can prompt combatants to start shooting at each other.18 Indeed, terrorists rely on the media to draw attention to their actions. There are a number of practical examples of this phenomenon that have occurred in the Balkans, not least in the ethnically divided town of Mitrovica in Kosovo, which has seen serious rioting over the last two years.19 An additional complication is the media’s tendency to focus on violence and conflict, thus further sensationalizing what may be isolated incidents taken out of context. Conversely there is an argument that media coverage can assist in containing conflicts by allowing the parties to place their positions and emotions in the public domain. While this may actually help to prevent the demonization of one side or the other, this was certainly not the case in the buildup to the Kosovo air campaign and subsequent efforts to bring Miloˇsevi´c to trial.20 The relationship between the media and the military and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) has always been a delicate one.21 One can see why if one accepts that particularly for the military the media can
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turn “victory into defeat.”22 There remains a mutual distrust, particularly of each other’s motives, a failure to fully understand the tasks that each performs and yet no one party can stand alone. There is an interdependence that is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. All the actors wish to communicate, not least because of a perception that the endorsement of positive public opinion lends credibility to their role. The media alone can act as conduits to a global audience where this endorsement is sought.
The Information War In order to gain some advantage all sides have used various methods to shape the opinions of a global audience. Information operations and its component parts have become integral to both military operations and political initiatives in the Balkans. Once the UNPROFOR had handed over to the NATO-led IFOR the Western mainstream media for the most part continued with their historical role of supporting their national policies and militaries.23 And it is at this stage that an extra influence was gradually brought to bear upon the watching, listening, and reading global audience. In one form or another we are all affected by information warfare, either directly or indirectly. However, its significance has increased exponentially in this increasingly wired world described by Philip Taylor.24 Perception management is part of everyday life and has become an integral part of all communications systems. That said, we may live in the information age, but it should not be forgotten that a large portion of the world does not have access either to the Internet or a telephone and relies on other forms of communication.25 But those who can “surf the web,” and for the most part they can be found in the more technologically advanced countries of Western Europe and North America, and who use communication tools, are highly likely to become the targets of the practitioners of perception management.26 This seems to indicate that Noam Chomsky’s assertion is correct. If the object is to exercise influence on those in leadership roles, those who influence and shape the opinions of the masses, then it would make eminent sense to retain control of the mainstream communications systems in the hands of the privileged few. At the same time we must remember that the technologically challenged masses also have highly structured although more mundane communications systems. The many religions in the world provide, within their structures, the opportunities for a rapid form of communication.
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Within the context of the Balkans all the protagonists have tried and continue to try to shape the opinions of the participants and the world audience. All forms of communication have been used, from face-to-face contacts at the highest diplomatic levels to conversations in the streets of Sarajevo, Belgrade, Priˇstina, and Skopje, from radio and TV transmitters within the region to satellites, from articles in the major news organs to leaflets distributed by military forces. Work has been undertaken to assess the effect of various campaigns and some proved less than successful.27 Nonetheless, on occasion, international coverage of specific events has been seen as the trigger for increased external involvement.28 It cannot be ruled out that future incidents will not elicit similar responses from the international community. NATO forces have used Information Operations and its subset, Psychological Operations, in order to support the peacekeeping efforts. At the operational level this has meant, for example, undertaking initiatives in support of the international community to prepare local populations for the introduction of a new currency, to highlight the dangers of unexploded mines, and to encourage local populations to exercise their voting powers. The establishment and use of radio stations, which address such challenging subjects as interethnic violence, has become an integral part of military operations. However, at the strategic level, the overwhelming technological and weapons superiority of the allies counted for little as the protagonists fought for the hearts and minds of a cyberspace audience. “Captain Dragan’s Serbian Cybercorps” was a group formed within Serbia to participate in chat forums, send email, and participate in the information war.29 In using cyberspace the Serbians proved very adept at providing alternative sources of information. They were also able to gain entry to and manipulate the websites of their opponents.30 Use of email by both pro and antigovernment groups and individuals became the norm in the run-up to and during the Kosovo air campaign. Direct offensive actions were also undertaken which sought to close down computer networks and thus affect the opponent’s ability to communicate both internally and externally. At one point NATO indicated that its email system had been attacked, causing a “Denial of Service.”31 It would be almost impossible to assert that Information Operations have not affected all of the mainstream media covering the events and crisis in the Balkans at some point. Attempts were made to exercise some control over the movement of journalists. All sides denied access to militarily sensitive areas, while media opportunities were organized to places and events that were intended to generate favorable coverage.32
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The BBC’s John Simpson made it quite clear that he was working under conditions of censorship at times, indicating that his access to information, as well as what he was allowed to report, were strictly controlled. Similarly, reporters at NATO headquarters for the daily press conference were not always given every tactical and operational piece of information. Despite this determination to retain some control, mistakes have been made by all sides in their desire to shape information to their advantage and NATO was severely criticized for some of its statements that turned out to be totally wrong, or at best less explicit than they should have been.33 This in turn affected the whole credibility of the NATO information campaign particularly among Western journalists and it has taken some time to make up the lost ground and perhaps it will never be possible to regain the upper reaches of the moral high ground that the Alliance seeks to reoccupy. Perception Management and Credibility The West’s attempts to pursue a successful perception management campaign in the months leading to the Kosovo air war are fully analyzed by Steven Collins, but it is worth reiterating several points.34 Perception management is not merely what has often been described as “spin,” or attempts to portray one’s own actions in the best possible light while at the same time perhaps taking the opportunity to denigrate an opponent. Detailed analysis and understanding of the target is required before a campaign is started. Sensitivities and nuances in relation to language, particularly important in the Balkans where it defines the ethnic background of a person, must be respected. Otherwise credibility will be lost and without credibility the potency of the message is also lost. The effects of successful perception management can only be measured in the long term but in Serbia it became obvious that the population was not swayed by NATO’s messages. A failure to understand the nuances of language and, more importantly, a failure to correctly appreciate the intellect of the target audience led to some setbacks. Initiatives to change behavior and perhaps even culture, once translated into campaigns can take many months if not years to come to fruition and in some respects they continue to this day throughout the Balkans. Lessons have been learnt at the highest levels, as the successful movement to oust Slobodan Miloˇsevi´c from power in the autumn of 2001 demonstrates. The effective application of a unified campaign based on advice produced by a marketing company and the support of both the National Democratic Institute and the International
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Republican Institute with funding to the tune of approximately $41 million from Congress, produced a nonviolent nationwide effort to ensure a fair election.35 Miloˇsevi´c has been ousted and is on trial in The Hague after a concerted campaign to extradite him, but numerous challenges remain. The more fundamental tasks of attempting to reintegrate ethnic entities, to produce truly democratic governance for all the peoples, and self-sustaining economies while dismantling illegal institutions are “a work in progress.”
Balkan Media The state controlled outlets such as Radia Televizija Srbije and Radio Jugoslavija fully supported the policies and objectives of the Miloˇsevi´c regime until its demise. Generally speaking most state or quasi-state media organizations in the Balkans have taken a similar position.36 That is not to say that there were no dissenting or independent voices. 37 Within Bosnia and Kosovo most newspapers are aimed at particular ethnic groups and thus tend to reflect the political aspirations of those groups. But here too, independent publishers continue to provide balanced coverage of the political agenda. In a similar vein, a large number of radio stations inside the region have been used as disseminators of specific agendas, while some continue to provide balanced reporting. In fact after the arrival of international peacekeeping troops in the region they too set up a number of radio stations with a view to influencing the local population. The importance local politicians attach to such broadcasting devices can be demonstrated by Biljana Plavˇsi´c’s efforts to acquire control of a television transmitter in Banja Luka in 1997.38 After the Bosnian conflict the international community attempted to encourage a less xenophobic form of broadcasting through the introduction of such initiatives as the Open Broadcast Network. Despite years of underfunding and being on the verge of financial collapse on several occasions, the company has at last secured sufficient investments to continue operations for the foreseeable future.39 Originally seen as a better alternative than trying to turn the state-owned stations into public broadcasting services, it produces good quality independent programs. However, the withdrawal of international support and an inability to sustain operations with advertising revenue soon caused difficulties. A recent rescue plan seems to have been successful, ensuring the survival of this important independent resource.40
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The Balkan media are still in transition. While there have always been independent journalists and editors, it would appear that life has not become that much easier for them. Despite the efforts of international organizations to provide some impetus and support for the establishment of media organizations with total editorial freedom, it has proved a difficult challenge. After the political changes that occurred on 5 October 2000 in Serbia, there was a mood of expectation among the state and quasi-state broadcasters. However, the expected reforms have not been forthcoming. There continues to be a feeling among Serbian journalists that in some cases the same political pressures continue to be exercised over media seeking editorial independence.41 Similarly in Bosnia a number of publications, radio and TV stations continue to be closely linked to specific ethnic entities and thus continue to espouse the values of separate identities rather than the multiethnic state the global community is seeking to encourage and establish. Conclusions Information is power and thus its production, processing, and dissemination has implications for international relations.42 Its control, and that of the technology associated with it, has an impact on the complex distribution of power at both the global and local levels. While the major media organizations undoubtedly still remain in the hands of the dominant social groups, new players have emerged, who, enabled by the new technologies, play their part in the production and dissemination of information. It is not possible to challenge Chomsky’s assertion regarding the Western mainstream media but viable alternative models may appear in the not too distant future. The appearance and wider distribution of cheaper communication technologies could yet bring about major modifications in the way that information is exchanged thereby altering the balance of power. Information Operations continue to be conducted but it is quite clear that we have moved on from an age where, when in conflict, we adopted Churchill’s adage, saying “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”43 In part the new technologies and communication systems have contributed to this. Despite the active involvement of many governments, national and international organizations and agencies, the major challenge of settling all outstanding disputes in the Balkans is still unresolved; Bosnia’s RS remains almost a pariah, Bosnia continues to be divided along ethnic lines, nearly one million people are still officially classified as displaced within Bosnia by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees
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(UNHCR), relations have yet to be fully normalized with the former Republic of Yugoslavia, Kosovo is deeply troubled, Montenegro may soon decide to declare independence from Serbia, the aspirations of those who seek a Greater Albania have not been met and conditions in the FYROM are not yet fully back to normal.44 The saturation media coverage of the middle to late 1990s has ended. Of the 3,842 media personnel accredited to NATO’s KFOR at the outset of operations, most have departed. Similarly, the number of accredited foreign journalists in Sarajevo has declined to single figures.45 Apart from a very small rearguard of Western journalists who remain at the scene, the rest have moved on to address issues of global terrorism, other conflicts, and the next humanitarian disaster. The communications systems remain in place and have in some cases undergone fundamental changes in an attempt to provide more equitable coverage of what is still a challenging political, social, and economic situation. Whether they will be able to attain and then maintain these idealized Western standards remains to be seen. The provision of sufficient funding in this area is fundamental to assisting the process to bring about permanent change. Conversely a lack of funding may prove more costly in the long term as the impetus for change is halted by problems with cash flow. Pressures on the local media also remain in place and despite efforts by the international community to effect wholesale change it has taken a long time to make any progress. These attempts to introduce change within the information and dissemination machinery can be seen as part of the international community’s attempt to use “soft power” in its search to produce a solution for all ethnic groups. Is it wrong to try to use “soft power” to achieve desirable outcomes such as democratically elected governments in ethnically diverse states, self-sustaining economies, and freedom of expression? To answer in the affirmative presupposes that the desirable outcomes are acceptable to the peoples of the Balkans. But the successful application of “soft power,” as defined by Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, would mean that the cultures of the Balkan states are perhaps discarded in favor of a model that has been approved by the international community as a whole.46 In the short term the local populations and their leaderships continue to prevaricate; in the longer term, the effects of perception shaping, in concert with political and economic pressures, may be more successful. If the history of the Balkans has shown us anything it is that unless the ethnic entities are fully persuaded that their future lies in discarding the old enmities and moving on, then they are quite capable of “out-waiting” the international community.
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While this speaks for a continuation of a concerted coherent effort to shape and influence opinions using the broad spectrum of information and communications systems, it also points to the fact that the challenge of the Balkans might be better addressed as a whole rather than attempting to impose solutions in a piecemeal manner. This chapter, with its narrow focus on the Balkans, has not attempted to consider related issues such as how organizations and decision-makers can deal effectively with the enormous amount of information that is produced and disseminated on a daily basis. Neither has it sought to address the changing structures of Western media organizations that have resulted in fewer subject matter experts being deployed to conflict zones. What it has tried to do is to look at the role of the traditional communicators and their impact, as well as to consider some of the other organizations that produce messages and whether their roles have changed over time. As much as there has been some realignment at the margins, there is no evidence to suggest that the role of the media has changed dramatically in this region. In a cynical vein it might be apposite to suggest that the Balkans have the communications systems and media they deserve, in the same sense that they have the leadership they deserve, despite externally initiated efforts to encourage change.
Notes 1. In this chapter the term “protagonists” is used to describe a wide range of actors encompassing the international community, led by the UN, NATO, and the various leaderships and communications assets of the many national and ethnic groupings in the Balkans. 2. The term “media” in this context includes both national and international mainstream print and broadcast organs as well as those sites on the Internet concerned with the dissemination of information relating to the Balkans. 3. See Philip Hammond and Edward S. Herman, eds., Degraded Capability; The Media and the Kosovo Crisis, London: Pluto Press, 2000, p. 113 for an explanation of “willing conspirators” and Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel, eds., Understanding Power; The Indispensable Chomsky, New York: New Press, 2002, p. 13 for a view that elaborates “dominant institutions.” 4. For a much fuller discussion of the influence media can exercise see: Johanna Neuman, Lights, Camera, War; Is Media Technology driving International Politics? New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996; B. Dan Wood and Jeffrey S. Peake, “The Dynamics of Foreign Policy Agenda Setting,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 92, Issue 1, March 1998, pp. 173–84; Diana C. Mutz and Joe Soss, “Reading Public Opinion: The Influence of News Coverage on
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5. 6.
7.
8. 9.
10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.
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Perceptions of Public Sentiment,” Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 61, Issue 3, Autumn 1997, pp. 431–51. Susan L. Carruthers, The Media at War, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000, p. 273. The phrase “triumph of the lack of will” is taken from James Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will: International Diplomacy and the Yugoslav War, London: Hurst & Co, 1997. An analysis of the relationship between media attention/ coverage and foreign policy, and in particular military intervention is to be found in Steven Livingstone, “Beyond the CNN Effect.” A transcript of his address is at: http://www.pubpol.duke.edu/cgi-bin/dewitt/papers/ listpapers.cgi?action⫽display&id⫽19. Peter Brock, “Dateline Yugoslavia: The Partisan Press,” Foreign Policy, No. 93, Winter 1993, p. 152. Also see Tariq Ali, ed., Masters of the Universe? NATO’s Balkan Crusade, London: Verso, 2000, p. xiv. Hammond and Herman, Degraded Capability, p. 200. Neil MacFarquhar provides a brief examination of the role that e-mails played during the air campaign in the spring of 1999 in an article entitled For First Time in War, E-Mail Plays a Vital Role written for News Online on 29 March 1999. It provides evidence of the use that the Yugoslav diasporas made of the Internet. The full text can be found at http://www.panambydesign.net/communal/forum/voxpop00048.html (19 March 2002). Additional material relating specifically to a CNN story which recounts the e-mail exchanges between Finnegan Hammill and a 16-year-old Albanian girl, known as Adona, is at: http://europe.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1998/10/ kosovo/email/archive.html (19 March 2002). The development of the Internet as a direct challenger to traditional newspapers is addressed by Colin Sparks in his chapter “From Dead Trees to Live Wires: The Internet’s Challenge to the Traditional Newspaper,” in James Curran and Michael Gurevitch, eds., Mass Media and Society, London: Arnold, 2000, pp. 268–92. http://www.usip.org/oc/cibriefing/roundtworp.html. The phrase is taken from a speech given by Nik Gowing at King’s College London, in the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives on 2 March 2000. For a full discussion of this topic and the pressures of real time information see: http://kcl.ac.uk/lhcma/infi/lec00.htm. Hammond and Herman, Degraded Capability, pp. 80–3. http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/1999/p99-074e.htm. In an interview with PBS Madeleine Albright indicated her motivation by saying “It was a galvanizing event . . . Despite all the efforts, something as terrible as Racak could happen. It energized all of us to say that this requires a larger plan, and a steady application of military planning for an air campaign.” For the rest of the interview see: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/ pages/frontline/shows/kosovo/interviews/albright.html. Another version of the widely reported events is provided in Hammond and Herman, Degraded Capability, pp. 117–19.
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16. Johanna Neuman, Lights, Camera, War; Is Media Technology Driving International Politics? New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996, pp. 229–48. 17. David Halberstam makes the point that by the late 1980s the US networks had become isolationist. He contends that coverage of foreign news depended on an obvious close relationship to US matters of interest and “lots of carnage.” See David Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals, New York: Scribner, 2001, p. 161. 18. Philip M. Taylor, lecture at US Special Forces University, Fort Walton Beach, 15 October 2001. Indeed there is a view that by constantly predicting a catastrophe the media starts to engender a feeling of inevitability and thereby inflames situations further. For examples see Fergal Keane’s speech on “The Role of the Media in Humanitarian Crisis” at http://jpn.cec.eu.int/ english/press-info/4-2-63.htm. 19. http://ne ws.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/ne wsid_652000/ 652228.stm. 20. Hammond and Herman, Degraded Capability, pp. 203–5 and Steven Collins, “Shaping Perceptions During the Latest Balkans Imbroglio,” European Security, Vol. 9, No. 3, Autumn 2000, pp. 38–61. Slobodan Miloˇsevi´c had been acknowledged as a man with whom Western leaders “could do business” in the aftermath of the DPA and in the space of a few years has become an indicted war criminal who attracted such headlines as “Clobba Slobba” in the British tabloids. 21. For a fuller analysis of the relationship between journalists and the military in conflicts see: Philip M. Taylor, Global Communications, International Affairs and the Media since 1945, London: Routledge, 1996, pp. 124–30. Similarly for a journalist’s view of the association between the media and NGOs see Fergal Keane’s remarks at http://jpn.cec.edu.int/english/press-info/4-263.htm, where he describes his experience of this “love/hate” relationship. 22. Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace, p. 467. 23. Taylor, Global Communications, p. 131. 24. Ibid. 25. It is interesting to note that even in the United States computer ownership and access to the web has not reached those numbers predicted some years ago and persistent inequalities remain. A more comprehensive review on this subject can be found at http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/ MR1109 which is a report named “Citizens, Computers, and Connectivity: A Review of Trends” written by Bikson and Panis. The inequalities identified in the report can only be greater in parts of the world less technologically developed than the USA. 26. The practicalities of perception management can take many forms but its aims are perhaps best described in the following definition: “Actions to convey or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning; and to intelligence systems and leaders at all levels to influence official estimates, ultimately resulting in foreign behaviors and official actions favorable to the originator’s
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27. 28. 29. 30. 31.
32. 33.
34. 35.
36.
37.
38. 39.
40. 41.
42.
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objective.” US Joint Publication 1-02, 1994. Simply put, perceptions are an amalgam of information that is received and processed to give it meaning. This allows it to be placed it in a context that makes sense and then allows the recipient to act on it. In essence, one makes sense of what one hears, sees, and feels. Images are particularly potent since they allow the viewer an immediate definition of the world. Carlotta Gall, “NATO TV is Sent to Serbs, Who Are Harsh Critics,” New York Times, 26 May 1999, p. A17. Steven Collins, “Shaping Perceptions During the Latest Balkans Imbroglio,” European Security, Vol. 9, No. 3, Autumn 2000, pp. 38–61. Ibid. Ibid. For a more complete list of targets under attack during the campaign see: http://www.content-wire.com/Home/Index.cfm?ccs⫽86&cs⫽900 (20 March 2002). Collins, “Shaping Perceptions,” fn. 24. An excellent example of the misunderstandings that occurred can be found by reading the transcript of the NATO Press conference on 15 April 1999 at: http://www.nato.int/kosovo/press/p990415a.htm. Collins, “Shaping Perceptions.” A fairly complete account of the advice and assistance provided to Yugoslav opposition parties by US companies and organizations was produced by Michael Dobbs, “US Advice Guided Milosevic Opposition; Political Consultants Helped Yugoslav Opposition Topple Authoritarian Leader,” Washington Post, 11 December 2000. The following web site carries a growing archive of media monitoring files which demonstrate the slanted coverage of various media in the Balkans: http://www.mediacenter.org.yu/english/monitorarhe.asp. Today in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia newspapers such as Nova Makedonija and Vecher are seen as pro-government, while Utrinski Vesnik, Dnevnik, Vest, and Makedonija Denes are regarded as independent. The ethnic minority Albanian population has Albanian language newspapers such as Flaka (which, although published by the editors of Nova Makedonija, is generally acknowledged as independent) and Fakti. “War of the Airwaves: Bosnia,” Economist, 30 August 1997, p. 37. h t t p : / / b a l k a n r e p o r t . t o l / c z / l o o k / B R R / a r t i c l e . t p l ? Id L a n g u a g e ⫹ 1 &IdPublication⫹9&NrIssue⫹1&rSection⫹10&NrArticle⫽3155&ST_ max⫽0. Ibid. A report on the state of the Serb independent media written by Veran Matic, Chairman of the Association of Independent Electronic Media is at: http://www.xs4all.nl/~pressnow/media/servie/twelve_months_on.html. Walter Lippman highlighted the importance of access to information just after the Great War in his seminal work Public Opinion, New York: Free Press, 1997, pp. 27–9.
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43. Attributed to Winston Churchill in remarks made to Joseph Stalin at the Teheran Conference in Iran on 30 November 1943. See http://www. etcetra.com/05071999/quote.htm. 44. Christopher Hope, “This is the Balkans, No One is Nice,” Guardian, 26 June 2001. 45. In early 2002 there were only four foreign journalists accredited to the NATO SFOR in Bosnia. At one stage in 1996 there were 4,288. The number of international journalists accredited to the UN in the Balkans rose from 1,032 in 1993 to 4,919 in 1995 and subsequently reduced to 682 in 1996. The Coalition Press and Information Centre in Sarajevo, Bosnia, has provided these figures. 46. Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Power and Interdependence in the Information Age,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 77, No. 5, September/October 1998, pp. 81–94.
PART TWO
The International Law and Organization
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CHAPTER 6
The UN Response to the Balkan Wars Frances Pilch and Joseph Derdzinski1
Introduction
T
he involvement of the UN in the Balkans has been labeled a tragic failure by some and a valiant but flawed humanitarian effort that saved thousands by others.2 In spite of this discrepancy in interpretation, there is no doubt that the experiences of the UN during the Yugoslav wars from 1991 through 1995 have led to deep selfexamination by that body, and substantial institutional and doctrinal changes concerning peacekeeping operations and the appropriate UN role in conflict situations. Central to consideration of this role are questions concerning the relationship between Security Council mandates and the ability of operational forces to carry out those mandates; the use of force by the UN and by regional organizations to support mandates; the security of deployed peacekeeping forces during ongoing civil wars; and questions concerning impartiality. Some view this as a conflict between traditional peacekeeping and second (or third) generation peacekeeping, in which the old rules—such as consent of parties, neutrality, use of force only in self-defense, and demilitarized buffer zones—no longer apply.3 In Bosnia, the UN clearly intervened in an unresolved conflict, in which some of the parties to the conflict were non-state actors. Civilian agencies and regional organizations, as well as state and international actors, were important ingredients in actions designed to resolve the conflict or ameliorate human suffering. The UN mandates, originally of
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limited scope, were greatly expanded over a four-and-a-half-year period into a complex operation that spanned five republics of the former Yugoslavia. In the end, it brought into high relief difficult issues concerning impartiality, peace enforcement, and gaps between mandates and resources. The UN response to the unfolding Balkan wars has led to a total reevaluation of the realities of UN peace operations, and subsequent examination of what the UN has the capacity to do, and should do, in areas involved in violent and ongoing conflict. No analysis of the role of the UN in the former Yugoslavia would present an accurate picture without an examination of the international context in which the events took place. The conclusion of the Cold War led to unprecedented cooperation within the UN Security Council (UNSC), especially between the permanent five. This cooperation was manifested during the Persian Gulf War of 1991. The UNSC, acting within this new framework of cooperation and employing new processes of consensus formation in its decision-making, was quick to authorize multiple new peacekeeping operations to respond to several different crises. For example, one of the most complex peacekeeping operations ever undertaken, the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), lasted from March 1992 to December 1995. Within that time frame, peacekeeping operations were also undertaken in Somalia (August 1992–March 1995) and in Haiti and Rwanda. The peacekeeping mission in the former Yugoslavia, the UNPROFOR, began in February 1992 and lasted until December 1995, when the DPA finally brought the conflict in Bosnia–Herzegovina to an end. The UN had assumed peacekeeping responsibilities, several of them involving complex operations, in several regions at the same time. Its resources were stretched very thin, and the management structures within the institution proved to have serious limitations, along with the inherent problems and contradictions of peacekeeping itself in areas of continuing conflict.4 Crisis in the Balkans Unfolds While the world focused on the Middle East and the conflict with Iraq, Yugoslavia was disintegrating. By 1987, Serb nationalist ambitions were openly promulgated by political leaders like Slobodan Miloˇsevi´c. By 1990, the communist party apparatus in Yugoslavia had virtually collapsed, and the constraint imposed on Yugoslav politics by a threat of Soviet intervention had evaporated. Franjo Tudjman’s party, preaching a Croatian nationalist doctrine, dominated Croatian elections in 1990.
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In May 1991, after the Serbs blocked a Croat from the rotating Yugoslav presidency, a referendum concerning the status of Croatia backed the confederalist proposal led by Slovenia and Croatia against the federal option supported by Miloˇsevi´c. In June 1991, both Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence from the SFRY. At the end of the year they were recognized, first by Germany and then, in January 1992, by the other members of the EC. Meanwhile, after a brief Slovene war that ended with the Brioni Accords brokered by the EC, Slovenia’s independence was secure. Macedonia held a referendum for independence in September 1991, while Bosnia–Herzegovina followed in early March 1992. The situation in Croatia differed from that in Slovenia due to the presence of a more substantial Serbian minority, particularly in the Krajina. Actions by the Tudjman government relieving several Serbs from high-level posts, disallowing the Cyrillic alphabet, and promoting vitriolic and pro-Croat nationalist rhetoric sparked concerns within the Serbian minority regarding their future status in an independent Croatian state, and fighting erupted in the region. The Serb-dominated JNA actively attempted to maintain and expand an area of control; when a cease-fire was eventually implemented in Croatia after January 1992, almost one-third of Croatia was controlled by the Serb Republic of Krajina. Involvement of the UN in the former Yugoslavia began in September 1991 when the Security Council unanimously adopted Security Council Resolution (SCR) 713, which called on all states to implement immediately a “general and complete embargo on all deliveries of weapons and military equipment to Yugoslavia.”5 In October 1991, then SecretaryGeneral Javier Perez de Cuéllar appointed Cyrus Vance, former US Secretary of State, as his personal envoy for Yugoslavia. Vance undertook numerous missions to Yugoslavia and other states to discuss the feasibility of deploying a UN peacekeeping operation. In November of that year, the UNSC passed SCR 721, calling for the deployment of a peacekeeping force upon request of the parties to the conflict in conjunction with a cease-fire agreement. The secretary-general submitted a peacekeeping plan to the Security Council, and in December 1991, SCR 724 was passed, authorizing the deployment of a small group of military personnel to prepare for such a peacekeeping operation. In January 1992, the Croatian conflict was suspended with a ceasefire negotiated by Vance, in which the Tudjman government and Croatian Serbs consented to a UN peacekeeping force. SCR 743, passed in February 1992, created UNPROFOR to supervise the cease-fire and to demilitarize UN “protected areas”—primarily areas in Croatia where
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the JNA had been assisting the Croatian Serbs; UNPROFOR was to replace the JNA as it withdrew. The headquarters for UNPROFOR was to be Sarajevo, perceived as a venue that would provide more security for the operation, as at that time the majority of active fighting was taking place in Croatia. The initial mandate was for a period of one year, and the operation was originally intended solely for Croatia.6
The Conflict in Bosnia The nature of the crisis in the former Yugoslavia was fundamentally altered between February and March 1992, when a referendum on the status of Bosnia–Herzegovina, boycotted by Serbs in Bosnia, produced a majority in favor of independence. Bosnian Muslims had feared minority status in a greater Serbian state in which leaders espousing a virulent form of Serbian nationalism prevailed. Serbs declared their own capital of Pale in a “greater Serbian republic.” The United States and the EC states quickly recognized Bosnia–Herzegovina as an independent state; in May 1992, Bosnia–Herzegovina was admitted to the UN, over the protests of the Serbs. By the spring of 1992, intensive armed conflict was underway in Bosnia, involving massive displacement of peoples and human rights violations, and the siege of Sarajevo by the Serbs had begun. Sarajevo had become so dangerous by May 1992 that the headquarters of UNPROFOR was relocated to Zagreb. SCR 749 (April 1992) authorized the deployment of a UN Protection Force of 10,400 military and 2,740 support personnel. Although the original SCRs concerning UN actions in the Balkans were of limited scope, efforts to respond to the evolving crisis were multifaceted. The UN provided an umbrella for diplomatic initiatives designed to end the conflict, and agencies such as UNHCR became increasingly involved as large-scale displacement of populations took place. Underlying the SCRs from early 1992 to December 1994 was the desire to alleviate the worst suffering caused by the war through humanitarian relief, while attempting to create a climate in which diplomacy could work toward a peace settlement. Other initiatives involved attempts to contain or limit the conflict to the greatest extent possible through arms embargoes, the establishment of no-fly zones and “weapons exclusion zones,” and a preventive peacekeeping operation in Macedonia. In addition, sanctions regimes designed to bring parties to the conflict to the table were put into place. The desire to protect noncombatants from the violence surrounding them ultimately found
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expression in the controversial “safe area” policies. Concomitantly, initiatives were taking place to establish an ad hoc international criminal tribunal to bring the worst offenders of international humanitarian law and human rights standards to justice. As the crises on the ground escalated, SCRs and mandates proliferated in response. In June 1992, SCR 758 extended UNPROFOR’s mandate to Bosnia–Herzegovina, primarily to provide security for the airport at Sarajevo and to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to that city and its environs. On 13 August 1992, the UNSC, citing Chapter VII, adopted SCR 770, which extended the mandate of UNPROFOR to ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid in Bosnia– Herzegovina. The fact that this resolution was based on Chapter VII signaled a change from “peaceful resolution of disputes” to enforcement action in response to a situation threatening international peace and security. The UNPROFOR mandate was thereafter continually revised. For example, in September 1992, its mandate was further enlarged to include the support of the UNHCR in the delivery of humanitarian relief throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina and the protection of convoys of released civilian detainees if the International Committee of the Red Cross so requested. The first-ever “preventive” peacekeeping force was authorized by SCR 795, in December 1992. UNPROFOR was deployed in the FYROM to monitor and report developments that might threaten that republic’s stability, in the hope of preventing the communal violence that had erupted in other areas of the former Yugoslavia.7 Regional organizations were an integral component of UN strategy in the Balkans from the beginning. SCR 757 (May 1992) imposed comprehensive economic sanctions on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), the union of the former Yugoslav republics of Serbia and Montenegro. In July 1992, NATO and WEU ships began monitoring compliance with SCRs 713 and 757. In November 1992, when the Security Council, through SCR 787 called upon states to enforce the embargoes, the NATO operation was expanded, to include the inspection of ships bound for the rump Yugoslavia. SCR 820 (April 1993) imposed total economic and diplomatic sanctions on Yugoslavia. In response, NATO and the WEU combined to form a joint operation.8 The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) appointed a “sanctions coordinator” to assist in the monitoring of the sanctions regime. Overseas Yugoslav funds were frozen, commercial traffic within the territorial waters of Yugoslavia was banned, controls were placed on the use of the Danube, and border and customs controls were put into
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place—all of which required the cooperation of bordering states and European organizations. In October 1992, SCR 781 established a no-fly zone over Bosnia, prohibiting military flights in specified airspace. A ban on other types of aircraft in the no-fly zone was spelled out in SCRs 786 (November 1992) and 816 (March 1993). While technically monitored by UNPROFOR, Chapter VIII of the UN Charter was invoked by SCR 816, and in reality the no-fly zone was enforced by NATO. NATO also established “exclusion zones” for heavy weapons on the ground around Sarajevo and Biha´c. These were acknowledged but not explicitly authorized by the UNSC. As the conflict progressed, some actions by regional organizations were relatively autonomous from the UNSC. For example, in anticipation of the need for reserves able to assist UN peacekeepers and possibly also to provide cover for withdrawing UN forces, several European nations developed a “rapid reaction force” for use in the Balkans. Ultimately, the use of NATO airpower in August 1995 against the Serbs in the exclusion zone around Sarajevo, Operation Delta Force, was undertaken with minimal UN direction. As the Serbs attempted to secure a corridor from Belgrade through northern portions of Bosnia to Krajina, reports of ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Croats from these areas and serious human rights violations began to emerge. In 1992, the journalist Roy Gutman from Newsday, after visiting the Manjaca camp near Banja Luka and interviewing refugees from the area, reported that thousands of Muslims were incarcerated in camps where they were being held in deplorable conditions and subjected to torture, degrading treatment, and death at the hands of the Serbs. Reports of widespread and systematic rape began to circulate. Concerns about these and other human rights violations found expression through the Security Council and other UN instruments. For example, SCRs 752 and 771 explicitly referenced the ongoing practice of ethnic cleansing and other violations of international humanitarian law. The UN was involved in attempts to resolve the crisis in the former Yugoslavia on several diplomatic fronts. For example, in August 1992, the London Conference (International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia), cochaired by the EC and the UN, debated and agreed on principles for the settlement of the conflict. This was to become a permanent body, with headquarters in Geneva. In 1993, it presented the Vance–Owen Peace Plan, which was signed by the parties in May. That plan called for a partition of Bosnia–Herzegovina that roughly
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legitimized some of the gains made by the Serbs through military means. However, this, and other cease-fires that were concluded, did not hold. On the contrary, it offered the pretext for a new phase of the war, when in Travnik, in April 1993, fighting between Muslim and Croat armies erupted. In the autumn of 1991, in fact, the Croatian nationalist party in Herzegovina (the HDZ, using the same name as Tudjman’s party in Zagreb) had started to create autonomous regions, an army, and separate institutions in order to prepare the “unification” of Croatian lands. This process inevitably led into a war with the Bosnian army (which became a de facto Muslim army) when the Croat force tried to impose control over the three cantons assigned to the Croats by the Vance–Owen peace plan. This conflict, which led to new waves of violations, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing between Croats and Muslims, was conducted with the direct involvement of Croatia, which sent troops and military assistance to the Bosnian Croats. As for Serbia, the UNSC had to threaten Zagreb with sanctions in the autumn, and this forced Croatia to withdraw from Bosnia at the end of 1993. Eventually, the conflict was stopped when the Clinton administration imposed upon Tudjman and Izetbegovi´c the creation of a Croat–Muslim federation in Bosnia–Herzegovina, connected to Croatia through a sort of confederation, as established in the Washington Agreement of 18 March 1994. Meanwhile, because of the targeting of civilians through the ethnic cleansing policies of the Serbs, the UN adopted a “safe area” policy in April 1993, beginning with the town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia (SCR 819). This small town was a strategic target for the Serbs, as it lay close to the border with Serbia and was an integral part of the corridor linking other Serbian controlled areas of Bosnia and Croatia. The towns ˇ of Biha´c, Goraˇzde, Sarajevo, Tuzla, and Zepa were protected as safe areas by SCR 824. SCR 836 (June 1993) extended the mandate of UNPROFOR “to deter attacks against the safe areas.” Implicit in the “safe area” concept was the idea that these enclaves would be demilitarized, and not used as bases of operations for any of the parties to the conflict. The secretary-general reported in December 1994 that the safe area concept was dangerously flawed.9 He noted the limitations of deterrence and the consequences of the use of airpower, the use by factions of safe areas for military purposes, and the lack of a clear delineation of the safe areas themselves. He noted the vulnerability of UNPROFOR to being taken hostage, the lack of suitable air targets, and the inconsistency between airpower and the primacy of a humanitarian mission. He noted that if UNPROFOR was truly to be used to deter attacks on the safe areas,
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it would have to be reinforced with troops, weapons, and equipment. The secretary-general also noted the paradox that by disarming the safe areas, UNPROFOR may have made them more vulnerable to attack. In July 1995, the Serbs overran the safe area of Srebrenica.10 The small Dutch contingent of peacekeepers deployed there was unable to prevent the fall of Srebrenica, and the NATO air strikes they called for never materialized in any substantial way—some having been vetoed by high UN officials such as the Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) to Bosnia, Yasushi Akashi. In the aftermath of the collapse of the town, more than 5,000 Muslim men and boys who were marching out of Srebrenica in an attempt to escape the Serbs were hunted down and massacred. Serbs deported Muslim women and children from the town. Males who attempted to leave Srebrenica on the deportation buses were removed at checkpoints; most were summarily executed. The tragedy of the fall of the safe area of Srebrenica and the subseˇ quent fall of the Zepa “safe area,” profoundly altered the course of UN conduct in Bosnia. When the Serbs bombarded the Sarajevo marketplace a few months later, killing and wounding numerous civilians, NATO responded forcefully through “Operation Deliberate Force,” bombing Serb targets and forcing the withdrawal of Serb heavy artillery from the surrounding mountains. As the Bosnian Serb military withdrew from the hills surrounding Sarajevo, their military campaigns, especially in eastern Bosnia, intensified. Operation Deliberate Force, however, and the establishment of the rapid reaction force, were among the factors contributing to the negotiated end of the Bosnian conflict. In 1994, the UNPROFOR operation in Croatia was renamed the United Nations Confidence Restoration Operation (UNCRO); its mandate included the monitoring of troop deployment lines and promotion of the process of reconciliation. This included implementing humanitarian aid and facilitating refugee return. Eventually, however, the Croatian government moved to eliminate the protected areas, and the subsequent flow of Serbian refugees out of these areas was substantial. UNCRO was unable to prevent this, and subsequently its mission ended in January 1996, although two new and smaller missions were established to monitor Prevlaka and other areas and to train law enforcement units. The International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia The DPA of 1995, brokered by the United States, brought an end to the active conflict in Bosnia. In December 1995, UNPROFOR was replaced by a 60,000 NATO-led peace Implementation Force (IFOR). This was
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re-designated as SFOR in December of the following year. A small UN presence remained until 2003, through the UN mission in Bosnia– Herzegovina (UNMIBH), which focused on fostering law enforcement capabilities. Though peacekeeping faced challenges and problems in Bosnia, an entirely different initiative was underway to bring justice to victims of atrocities in the region. As the media began to focus attention on violations of the laws of war in the conflict, the Security Council established a Commission of Experts to investigate allegations of war crimes and atrocities. SCR 808 (February 1993) requested the secretary-general to submit a proposal for a tribunal to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes. SCR 827 (May 1993) established the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. The first international criminal court since the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals following World War II, the new court had jurisdiction over four categories of crimes—grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, violations of the laws or customs of war, genocide, and crimes against humanity— committed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 1991.11 As of February 2003, 34 accused have been tried before the court, which has rendered extremely important judgments in cases involving the command responsibility doctrine, the interpretation of rape as torture or as a crime against humanity, and genocide. In July 1995, the ICTY indicted Radovan Karadˇzi´c and Ratko Mladi´c, the political and military leaders of the Bosnian Serbs. Judgments have been handed down on Croats, Muslims, and Serbs. In August 2001, Radislav Krsti´c, former Commander of the Drina Corps of the Bosnian Serb Army, was convicted of genocide for his involvement in the massacre of Muslim men and boys after the fall of Srebrenica. This first conviction by the ICTY of the crime of genocide has set an important precedent for the Slobodan Miloˇsevi´c case currently before the court.12 Challenges Encountered by the UN in the Balkans UN operations in the Bosnian wars encountered numerous challenges. These can be grouped roughly into four problem areas—the nature of the conflict itself, especially as it related to the vulnerability of UN peacekeepers and their ability to carry out their mandates; disparity between UNSC mandates and resources and operational difficulties; command and control issues, especially as they related to troop contingents and the use of NATO airpower; and disagreement within the UN itself on questions concerning the use of force and the doctrine of impartiality.
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Nature of the Conflict Throughout most of the period of UN involvement in the Balkans, no stable cease-fire existed. Monitoring the actions of parties to the conflict was extremely difficult due to inhospitable terrain and the sophistication of the weaponry, especially that possessed by the Bosnian Serbs, most of which had been inherited from the JNA. In addition, the political goals of the parties to the conflict were diametrically opposed to the humanitarian goals of the UN missions. One analyst noted, “The war in Bosnia, and to a lesser extent in Croatia, involved explicit strategies by one ethnic group to kill or drive out members of another ethnic group. Placing a blockade around a city and shelling it was among the tactics employed. For those pursuing such actions, it would be incongruous to allow relief agencies access to those areas . . . ”13 Another noted that, “[t]he peacekeepers were responsible for safeguarding large cities and for transporting humanitarian assistance across great distances. With respect to the cities, safe havens could not be guaranteed . . . ”14 Fulfilling the mandate to alleviate the suffering of the civilian population became increasingly difficult. The victims of the conflict were not simply collateral, they were themselves targets as ethnic cleansing campaigns accelerated. That transformed the delivery of aid to distressed populations and centers into essentially a political question. Therefore, convoys were blocked and the deliverers of aid themselves were targeted. Provisions became bargaining chips, and assisting besieged populations had to be habitually renegotiated, as ethnic groups were deliberately targeted. Freedom of movement of UN personnel, one of the principal requirements of most cease-fire agreements, was also extremely problematic. Freedom to travel unimpeded is essential to monitoring activities, supplying peacekeepers, and delivering humanitarian aid. By late spring of 1995, it was almost impossible for UNPROFOR to move about in Bosnian Serb-controlled territory. In effect, peacekeepers attempting to deter attacks on safe areas and assist the civilians present in them were cut off from outside help and unable to fulfill their mandates. Peacekeepers themselves were increasingly targeted by belligerents. When NATO airpower struck against Serb ammunition dumps in Pale in May 1995, in response to violations of the “total exclusion zone” for heavy weapons around Sarajevo, Bosnian Serb forces retaliated by taking more than 400 UN personnel hostage. In some cases these hostages were used as human shields to deter further bombing of Serb positions. In 1994 Serbs had taken several Dutch military observers hostage, and in July 1995, Bosnian Serbs advancing on Srebrenica took hostage
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members of the Dutch battalion there. Concerns on the part of governments supplying contingents for the safety of their nationals had direct implications for the dialogue concerning the appropriate use of force by the UN in the Balkans. One of the major problems encountered in the search for stable cease-fires and negotiated solutions to the conflict was the involvement of paramilitary groups, militias, and other “rogue” elements, operating independently of recognized negotiating authorities.15 For example, the Bosnian Serb army participated in the conflict as a non-state actor, as did paramilitary forces on all sides. This made negotiations extremely complicated; as a consequence, cease-fires were frequently violated and repeatedly failed. As one commentator noted, “The peacemaking efforts of the United Nations were ambitious in Bosnia, but general failure here may not be attributable to the organization, although its non-neutral stance and the behavior of some of its leading members did not help. Finding a way to resolve the crisis has been difficult because, as noted above, incentives exist for the sides to keep fighting, and it is not clear that agreements made by political leaders will hold on the battlefield.”16 Because diplomatic efforts were not able to achieve lasting cease-fires, the conflict continually erupted, endangering peacekeepers and civilians alike. In traditional peacekeeping, parties to the conflict must consent to peacekeeping. In the Bosnian wars, consent was tenuous at best, and cooperation of parties to the conflict was notably lacking. Because the delivery of humanitarian aid was considered UNPROFOR’s primary mandate, UN decision-makers were deeply reluctant to deviate from impartiality and to take forceful action against any of the parties, as they felt that this would undermine the ability of the UN to carry out its most important mission. As one analyst noted, “The closer a peacekeeping mission approaches peace enforcement, the more likely the mission is entering not a gray zone, as some would have it, but rather a zone of paralysis, wherein any mandate component, be it the delivery of humanitarian aid, the monitoring of weapons, or simply self-support missions, becomes difficult if not impossible to achieve. Peacekeeping and peace enforcement are, in fact, separate and distinct.”17
The Mandate–Mission Gap and Operational Difficulties The UN response to conflict in the Balkans essentially involved ad hoc arrangements designed to address rapidly changing UNSC mandates, which in turn reflected contingencies on the ground. Overall strategic
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focus was minimal, and there was a decided disconnect between the UNSC, the Secretariat entrusted with operationalizing the mandates, and those laboring “in the trenches.” UN intervention in the Bosnian conflict began as non-forcible humanitarian intervention, but shifted in 1995 to an enforcement action.18 Prior to the creation of UNPROFOR, the emphasis within the UNSC and the EC had been the maintenance of the political and territorial integrity of Yugoslavia. The initial arms embargo imposed by SCR 713, a future key component of UN policy in Bosnia, in reality favored Yugoslavia and later Serbia—as they possessed the lion’s share of the weapons. UNPROFOR itself was created originally to help the ICRC with humanitarian efforts and to monitor the January 1992 cease-fire between Croatia and Yugoslavia. Therefore peacekeepers were already in place in Croatia and Bosnia when the Bosnian conflict erupted in earnest. When the mandate was extended to authorize greater use of force, the peacekeepers on the ground, primarily trained for humanitarian missions, were ill equipped to respond. Once Bosnia–Herzegovina had been recognized by the international community and granted admission to the UN as an independent, sovereign state in 1992, intervention by Serbian and Croatian troops in Bosnia was technically a violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. Rather than defend the new state of Bosnia robustly, however, the UN chose the path of humanitarian intervention. For example, some of the earliest efforts of the UN involved the opening of the Sarajevo airport, so that humanitarian aid could be delivered. Meanwhile, the arms embargo imposed on all parties to the conflict, in effect discriminated primarily against the Bosnian Muslims. When the rump FRY withdrew the JNA from Bosnia, it left behind well-trained, well-armed troops to join local militias. Various agreements by Croatia and Serbia to respect the sovereignty of Bosnia–Herzegovina and withdraw their military forces from active participation in the Bosnian conflict were extremely difficult to enforce. The lack of manpower and restrictions on freedom of movement made effective monitoring of these agreements by peacekeepers almost impossible. As SCRs multiplied in response to events in Bosnia, mandates sometimes were unclear or imprecise, and in other instances, did not match capabilities on the ground. For example, peacekeeping forces initially intended to monitor demilitarized zones were now called to support and protect humanitarian relief efforts. In Bosnia the delivery of aid had political connotations and was fraught with danger. Aid convoys were stopped at checkpoints along difficult terrain, aid supplies were often
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hijacked, and peacekeepers themselves were sometimes deliberate targets of violence. The resources to carry out UNSC mandates often were not forthcoming from governments. The dire financial straits in which the UN found itself were exacerbated by the multiple needs of complex peacekeeping missions. Force requirements recommended by the commanders on the ground were sometimes ignored by the UNSC. For example, the UNPROFOR commander had estimated in 1993 that 34,000 troops would be needed to protect the safe areas and humanitarian aid convoys.19 Instead, a light option of 7,600 troops, recommended by the secretary-general, was chosen, with NATO providing the possibility of airpower if needed. Even these 7,600 additional troops took more than a year to materialize. Nine months after the light option had been chosen, only 5,000 troops had been deployed.20 The ability to utilize NATO airpower to enforce mandates had been spelled out; however, the command and control involved (the dual-key problem) was never adequately solved. In reality, the “safe areas” were never demilitarized. The small UN peacekeeping force in Srebrenica, for example, lacked the manpower, and perhaps the will, to do so. In addition, the Bosnian Muslims in the enclave did not fully cooperate with the requirements of demilitarization. The Bosnian Serbs used the presence within Srebrenica of armaments and some Bosnian Muslim military forces as a pretext to surround the enclave and finally overrun it. By 1995, when Srebrenica fell, the Dutch battalion was woefully short of supplies, especially fuel. Demilitarization was frequently part of the UN mandates in Bosnia. In most cases, demilitarization was not effectively achieved. In Croatia, for example, deployment of the initial peacekeeping force was delayed approximately six months after the peace plan was negotiated, leaving a small group of military observers to begin the complicated tasks involved in demilitarization of UN Protected Areas (UNPAs). The ad hoc multinational character of peacekeeping has been called its “political strength and operational weakness.”21 By March 1994, 36 nations had provided military contingents to UNPROFOR. While Britain and France provided almost 25 percent, other NATO or European nations contributed another 50 percent.22 In addition to the fact that force levels were inadequate to fulfill UNSC mandates, there were significant delays in deployment of authorized troops for peacekeeping. “This meant that new tasks were undertaken at reduced levels by troops already on the ground and at the expense of existing tasks, consequently diluting effectiveness.”23
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In addition, rotation of national contingents often did not take place in a timely manner. For example, it took more than six months to replace Canadian peacekeepers in Srebrenica with the Dutch battalion. This delay contributed negatively to complete and effective communications between contingents as the changeovers took place. Due to the proliferation of peacekeeping operations around the world and the reluctance of many countries to contribute troops to peace operations in obviously dangerous and hostile environments, troops were often recruited from states with little peacekeeping experience. These contingents were poorly supplied and sometimes inadequately trained. One episode highlighted the difficulty of incorporating less well-equipped units into UN peacekeeping forces. In 1994, the Serbs shelled the safe area of Biha´c, which was defended by a Bangladeshi contingent. The shelling of Biha´c prompted disagreements within the Security Council concerning the appropriate response. Those with national contingents on the ground, such as the United Kingdom, generally opposed a hard-line response to the Serbs, as did the Russians. The United States and France argued for a forceful response to Serb encroachments on safe areas. Eventually, the Bangladeshi contingent was replaced. While some units were under-equipped and less well trained, other contingents from Russia, Ukraine, and Nigeria were censured by the UN for “racketeering, illegal dealings in weapons and fuel, prostitution, drug dealing and other charges.”24 While the Security Council attempted to provide strategic vision for peacekeeping, coordination with the Secretariat and with commanders on the ground became increasingly problematic. In late spring of 1995, when it had become clear that NATO air action would provoke the Bosnian Serbs to retaliate against UN personnel, the secretary-general, on the advice of the force commander and the UN commander in Bosnia–Herzegovina, was prompted to suggest to the Security Council four options for UNPROFOR in Bosnia–Herzegovina: (1) withdrawal; (2) continue on the same course; (3) change the mandate to permit greater use of force; and (4) change the mandate to include only those functions that could reasonably be expected to be successful. Against the wishes of the secretary-general, the Security Council attempted to combine options (2) and (3), continuing on the same course, but authorizing the new rapid reaction force, to give additional firepower to the operation.25 While most analysts agree that communications between NATO and UN commanders on the ground were effective, the disconnection between New York and force commanders in the Balkans was a source of concern throughout UN engagement in the region.
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Command and Control The UNSC provided strategic direction for UN operations in Bosnia through SCRs and their mandates. The Secretaries-General Javier Perez de Cuéllar (1982–91) and Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1992–96) were responsible for recommendations to the Security Council and for the missions themselves. The SRSG in Bosnia was the key intermediary between the field and UN headquarters; UNPROFOR commanders on the ground attempted to carry out the UNSC mandate, and made recommendations and requests, primarily through the SRSG. UNPROFOR had serious command and control problems. Troops in UNPROFOR remained under national control; added to this was the command and control level of NATO, to which some of the troopcontributing nations belonged.26 The SRSG possessed a higher level of decision-making authority than that office had held in the past. Approval for bombing by NATO warplanes was under a dual-key structure, with the special representative controlling the first key. The complicated route from field commander to special representative of the secretarygeneral and then to NATO led to delays and confusion, ultimately contributing to the failure to protect the security of Srebrenica and other safe areas. Because UN personnel in the Balkans were increasingly targeted, even taken hostage, national governments were reluctant to have their contingents fulfill SCR mandates through the use of force. The “phone home syndrome,” in which national contingents answered not only to UN commanders but also to their national governments, also complicated military chains of command.27 As Dutch peacekeepers surrendered to Bosnian Serbs advancing upon Srebrenica, the SRSG reportedly received a phone call from a highly placed Dutch official demanding that air strikes against the Serbs not take place, for fear of casualties among the peacekeepers.28 The fact that national peacekeeping contingents essentially answered to two masters, their own governments and the UN, is clearly illustrated by the fact that during UNPROFOR, “ . . . French President Jacques Chirac bypassed UN commanders on several occasions and gave direct orders to French units deployed in Sarajevo. In May 1995, this interference led to French UN troops taking the first ground-based offensive action against Bosnian Serb units on the Vrbanja Bridge in Sarajevo. Similarly, Turkish UNPROFOR troops provided limited logistic and medical support to Bosnian Muslim Army units during the offensives against Serb positions on Mount Vlasi´c during early 1995.”29
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Questions concerning the legitimate use of NATO airpower to support peacekeepers in the safe areas were among the most contentious issues during the Balkan wars. In addition to the fundamental philosophical differences concerning the relationship of force to peace operations and impartiality on the part of the different actors, the mechanics of the dual-key system were complicated and cumbersome. In the course of the Balkan conflict, triggering mechanisms for the use of airpower became somewhat streamlined; some NATO operations, such as those involving the monitoring of “no-fly zones,” proceeded relatively smoothly. When the Serbs targeted Sarajevo in early 1994, leading to substantial loss of life, the UN secretary-general called on NATO to prepare for air strikes. In February 1994, with strong Russian support, Bosnian Serbs were called upon to withdraw heavy weapons from the hills surrounding Sarajevo. Faced with impending air strikes, the Serbs agreed to comply, although much of the weaponry was monitored in place rather than removed entirely. Prior to that, however, NATO air forces patrolling the “no-fly zone” and offering air support to the UN mission had acted offensively on only eight occasions in “the first 710 days of Operation Deny Flight—this out of over 36,500 combat sorties.”30 Following the minimal resort to airpower in the context of the fall of Srebrenica, the Serbs returned to the mountains around Sarajevo. A brutal mortar attack on 28 August 1995, on the Sarajevo marketplace, perhaps combined with the memory of the tragedy that followed the violation of the safe areas, stiffened the resolve of NATO and certain UN decision-makers to employ airpower. In this instance the first of the dual keys on air response fell to the UNPROFOR Commander in Sarajevo. He requested NATO air strikes, and the first key was turned, without consultation with UN superiors or troop contributing countries. NATO Southern Command held the second key, and on 30 August 1995, Operation Deliberate Force commenced. In the view of Richard Holbrooke, the top US negotiator “. . . the dual-key arrangement between NATO and the United Nations is a terrible idea. Let us never see it again. It took two of the most important organizations in the world . . . with incompatible mandates and incompatible missions, and linked them in a way which weakened them both.”31 It was not until 1995 that UNPROFOR used the services of French, British, and Dutch combat troops from the European rapid reaction force and significant NATO combat air forces operating under NATO command, to shell Bosnian Serb forces. The heavy guns of the rapid reaction force in combination with NATO airpower ended the siege of
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Sarajevo, and were among the principal factors that pushed the Serbs to the negotiating table.32 The complexity of operations in Bosnia compounded the difficulty of coordination between military chains of command and the many semiautonomous civilian components that were also operating in the theater. The provision of aid was accomplished primarily by civilian components of the mission and NGOs.33 Over 150 NGOs actively functioned in the UNPROFOR area of operations; of these, only 41 regularly coordinated their operations with UNPROFOR.34 These problems of coordination have also occurred in other UN operations, such as those in Rwanda and Zaire in 1994 and 1995, and have led to serious debate through the Brahimi Report and other venues, concerning the relationship between peacekeepers and other actors.35 Legitimate Use of Force Even though the use of force in self-defense was at the discretion of local UNPROFOR contingent commanders, UNPROFOR was essentially a non-forcible humanitarian intervention until the end of 1994. Contingents were largely designed to assist in the delivery of humanitarian aid, and were small and lightly armed. General Sir Michael Rose, the UN Commander in Bosnia–Herzegovina in 1993–94, noted that his UN force was neither structured for nor, in his mind, authorized to use coercive force. He clarified this by saying, “[h]itting a tank [in self-defense] is peacekeeping. Hitting infrastructure, command and control, logistics, that is war, and I’m not going to fight a war in white-painted tanks.”36 SCR 836 (June 1993) fundamentally changed UNPROFOR’s mandate, invoking Chapter VII and noting that, acting in self-defense, UNPROFOR could take necessary measures in response to bombardment, armed incursion or deliberate obstruction, to deter attacks on the safe areas. It also noted that member states acting nationally or through regional organizations could use all necessary means (authors’ emphasis), including airpower, to support UNPROFOR. The command system in place to enforce SCR 836 required UN commanders on the ground to request close air support through the UN chain of command to the SRSG, who would first approve and then communicate the request to the North Atlantic Council, the governing body of NATO. Although this cumbersome decision-making structure was somewhat streamlined in February 1994, after which the SRSG would call only the commander of NATO’s southern region, response time from decision to the use of airpower was still inadequate.
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Ambiguity in the language of SCR 836 contributed to confusion on the legitimate use of force, as the resolution lent itself to alternative interpretations. SCR 836 was worded as follows: (The Security Council) Authorizes UNPROFOR . . . acting in selfdefense, to take the necessary measures, including the use of force, in reply to bombardments against the safe areas by any of the parties or to armed incursion into them or in the event of any deliberate obstruction in or around those areas to the freedom of movement of UNPROFOR or of protected humanitarian convoys.37 (The Security Council) Decides that . . . Member States, acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, may take, under the authority of the Security Council and subject to close coordination with the Secretary-General and UNPROFOR, all necessary measures through the use of air power, in and around the safe areas, in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to support UNPROFOR in the performance of its mandate set out in paragraphs 5 and 9 above.38
The lack of clarity of the mandate on the use of force was largely due to the linking of the use of force with “self-defense.” Clearly, the SCR left open the possibility for either a broad or narrow interpretation of the use of force. The use of force was also circumscribed by the availability of force to use. Airpower was clearly an option, with appropriate authorization. However, troop levels were often inadequate to the tasks at hand, and were sometimes, as already noted, ill trained and ill equipped, posing practical problems in the potential employment of force. It was extremely difficult to attain consensus on the proper and legitimate use of force by UN peacekeepers and by NATO during the conflict. National contingents of UNPROFOR, such as the Dutch battalion at Srebrenica, were required to consult their governments as well as the UN chain of command. Governments that had supplied peacekeepers were very reluctant to authorize force, fearing the safety of their nationals. UN leaders were even more reluctant—citing concern for the safety of peacekeepers, the desire to retain complete impartiality in order to facilitate diplomatic initiatives to end the conflict, and the basic incompatibility of the notion of the use of force with the idea of peacekeeping. On the Security Council, Russia frequently expressed deep reluctance to use airpower to bomb Serbian targets. After an initial refusal by the SRSG to authorize NATO air strikes in response to increased targeting of civilians in Sarajevo by Serbs, in May 1995 air strikes were authorized. The hostage crisis ensued, with some Serbs even dressing in French uniforms and using French equipment to deceive peacekeepers. Even though
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the French commander counterattacked and ultimately accomplished the release of UN hostages, these incidents provoked a hardening of attitudes on the utility of the use of force. The secretary-general clearly became more adamant that the use of airpower presented perils for the UN and that “the logic of peacekeeping flows from political and military premises that are quite distinct from those of enforcement.”39 Enhancement of the UNPROFOR troops became a possibility through the innovation by the governments of France and the United Kingdom of a rapid reaction force or theatre reserve. European and NATO defense ministers met and agreed to constitute two heavily armed brigades to supply a ground force option if needed. This rapid reaction force became operationally ready in August 1995, and consisted of 12,500 soldiers equipped with artillery, heavy mortars, tanks, and armed helicopters.40 This idea met with significant resistance from the SRSG, who cautioned that even the name, Rapid Reaction Force, was too confrontational. Once again, the ambivalence within the UN leadership concerning the use of force became readily apparent. The difference in philosophy concerning the use of force was never really resolved in Bosnia. Even though SCR 770 opened the possibility of the use of force by states and regional organizations to facilitate humanitarian assistance within the UN framework in Bosnia, the secretarygeneral argued as early as May 1992 that to depart from a basis of consent would “risk involving the force in hostile encounters with those whose cooperation will be necessary if UNPROFOR is to succeed in fulfilling its existing mandate . . .”41 When IFOR was established, subsequent to the DPA, the lessons of UNPROFOR were heeded. “In discharging their numerous mandates, UNPROFOR commanders had to consult political authorities in both NATO and the UN before force could be used. UN authorities were very reluctant to authorize forceful measures. Consequently, this unwieldy, ‘dual-key’ command and control arrangement rendered UNPROFOR powerless to respond to tactical developments. The Contact Group countries . . . especially the US, insisted that IFOR would not operate under the same emasculating constraints . . . IFOR would be endowed with a single chain of command (NATO), executive powers, robust rules of engagement and overwhelming force.”42 Conclusion The involvement of the UN in the Balkan wars precipitated a major transformation in UN response to situations of conflict. The “lessons learned” from Bosnia were many and varied. The first was that newfound consensus
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on the UNSC had mandated ambitious operations that lacked resources and management capabilities. In addition, these operations were to take place in dangerous and intractable conflicts, in which consent of the belligerents was lacking. Indeed, peacekeepers themselves could be targeted. The former SRSG in Yugoslavia has commented, “The ambiguity, imprecision, and lack of consistency in the relevant Security Council resolutions, particularly the tragic lack of correspondence between the mandate proclaimed in New York and the resources given to the field, were among the main reasons for the Yugoslav consequences.”43 He adds, however, that “under difficult and even dangerous conditions the UN force did help in limiting the scope of conflict and was able to achieve a measure of stabilization through a series of cease-fires and weapons-withdrawal agreements concluded and monitored under its auspices, and through substantial humanitarian relief operations which enabled internally displaced and encircled civilian populations to survive four winters and summers.”44 The idea of enlarging mandates after an initial, limited mandate was authorized, or “mission creep,” was characteristic of UN actions with regard to Bosnia. The modest beginnings of UNPROFOR in Croatia rapidly changed. By March 1995, it consisted of 38,599 military personnel, including 684 UN military observers.45 Its mandate had been continually revised, from that of an interim arrangement to create conditions under which a peace could be negotiated, particularly by demilitarizing and safeguarding UNPAs in Croatia, to ensuring the security and functioning of the airport at Sarajevo and the delivery of humanitarian aid to that city and its environs, to support of the UNHCR to deliver aid throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, to monitor the no-fly zone, and to protect UN safe areas. In addition, it was to monitor the cease-fires that came and went throughout the area. UNPROFOR was also deployed in Macedonia as a preventive peacekeeping mission. These rapidly changing mandates led to ad hoc procedures. All of these problems were exacerbated by the ambitious nature of multiple, highly complex peacekeeping operations, in different geographic regions around the world simultaneously. Certain objectives were contracted to non-UN organizations, especially NATO, in order to take advantage of their unique capabilities. However, the disparities in philosophy of peacekeeping and the awkwardness of “dual-key” command and control structures were not sufficiently addressed prior to the enactment of SCRs. Two comprehensive reports emanated from UN experiences in Bosnia.46 Upon the conclusion of the Bosnian conflict with the DPA of 1995, the secretary-general, pursuant to a General Assembly Resolution,
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issued an incredibly thorough and painstakingly honest report on Srebrenica. This Srebrenica Report, as it became known, coupled with the report on the failures of the UN in Rwanda, led to the important and controversial Brahimi Report. The Srebrenica Report represents deep soul searching concerning many issues. It questioned why the Dutch battalion at Srebrenica did not fire on the Serbs as they were advancing toward the blockade; it criticized the fact that the Bosnian Muslims never disarmed completely and that they attacked out of the safe area, even though those incidents were few. It questioned the very concept of a “safe area,” and drew attention to the gap between the mandate and the resources of the mission. It analyzed the failure to use airpower, noting that there was deep reluctance to use airpower due to a desire not to appear to “take sides,” fear of reprisal— especially the concern for peacekeepers taken hostage, concern about disruption of the primary humanitarian mission of UNPROFOR, and fear of losing control of the operation (authors’ emphasis).47 The report concludes that, in retrospect, it was wrong to declare repeatedly and publicly a reluctance to use airpower except as a last resort. It notes that many of the errors of the UN flowed from a wellintentioned effort to respond to the plight of civilians in Bosnia– Herzegovina. However, the arms embargo deprived the Bosnian Muslims of the right of self-defense. There was no peace agreement prior to the deployment of UNPROFOR. Irregular forces on all sides of the conflict made negotiations almost impossible, as there often was no government authority with which to negotiate. Conceptual flaws in the safe area policy were apparent from the beginning. Safe areas were not clearly defined, and the mandate to protect them was open to multiple interpretations. Most importantly, “. . . [The] Council obviously expected that the warring parties on the ground would respect the authority of the United Nations and would not obstruct or attack its humanitarian operations.”48 Hardly alluded to in the report with the exception of a paragraph in its last pages, was the pervasive view in top UN quarters that all parties were equally responsible for the conflict. The report acknowledges “the failure to fully comprehend the extent of Serbian war aims,” and notes that reporting from the field “may have been illustrative of a more general tendency to assume that the parties were equally responsible for the transgressions that occurred.”49 The report concludes with a seemingly deeply felt assumption of responsibility for the Srebrenica massacres: “The United Nations experience in Bosnia was one of the most difficult and painful in our
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history . . . Through error, misjudgment and an inability to recognize the scope of the evil confronting us, we failed to do our part to help save the people of Srebrenica from the Serb campaign of mass murder.”50 The Brahimi Report constituted a major new study on UN peacekeeping and peace operations, and was prepared at the request of the secretary-general by a panel of ten respected experts, headed by Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi of Algeria. Many of the criticisms of past UN missions and recommendations for future UN peace operations can be directly linked to the UN response to the Balkan wars. From April 1992, to the DPA in November 1995, more than 20 UN soldiers died and more than 1,500 were wounded or injured.51 Human suffering was addressed, negotiations were facilitated, and the outbreak of violence was prevented in Macedonia through UN involvement. According to the UNHCR, “At the height of the conflict, UNHCR assisted 3.5 million people in Bosnia and surrounding regions and another 700,000 who became refugees and helped establish history’s longest running air bridge, which fed the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo through four severe Balkan winters.”52 The Security Council had enacted more than 100 resolutions. The successes of UN intervention in the Balkans have been largely overshadowed by the tragedies that took place, in particular the ethnic cleansing policies that remained largely unchecked by the international community and wholesale massacres and rapes of innocent civilians throughout the conflict. The UN has been indicted not simply for lack of vision and resources, but also for lack of political will by its members to address effectively the consequences of its own policies—namely the creation of “safe areas” and “protected zones” that were neither safe nor adequately protected. Poor organization and communication and profound philosophical disagreements on appropriate use of force pervaded the UN response to the crises in the region. The rich conclusions of the Brahimi Report included recommendations concerning the closing of the mandate–mission gap, the need for strategic planning of peacekeeping operations, the importance of rapid deployment in support of mandates, the need for better coordination with regional organizations, and the recognition that future peace operations will undoubtedly take place in ambiguous, hostile, and dangerous environments. The report notes, “There are many tasks which United Nations peacekeeping forces should not be asked to undertake and many places they should not go. But when the United Nations does send its forces to uphold the peace, they must be prepared to confront the lingering forces of war and violence, with the ability and the determination to defeat them.”53
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Notes 1. The views presented in this chapter are solely those of the authors and should not be attributed in any way to the US Air Force Academy or the US Department of Defense. 2. For a scathing indictment of Western involvement in Bosnia see David Rieff, Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995. For an excellent critical analysis of the UN in the Bosnian conflict, see Barry Ashton, “Making Peace Agreements Work: United Nations Experience in the Former Yugoslavia,” Cornell International Law Journal, Vol. 30, 1997. 3. See for example, Oliver Ramsbotham and Tom Woodhouse, Humanitarian Intervention in Contemporary Conflict, Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996; Stephen Ryan, The United Nations and International Politics, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000; and Katherine E. Cox, “Beyond Self-Defense: United Nations Peacekeeping Operations and the Use of Force,” Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, Vol. 27, Spring 1999. 4. Satish Nambiar, “UN Peacekeeping Operations in the Former Yugoslavia— From UNPROFOR to Kosovo,” in Ramesh Thakur and Albrecht Schnabel, eds., United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Ad Hoc Missions, Permanent Engagement, Tokyo, New York, Paris: United Nations University Press, 2001. 5. United Nations Security Council Resolutions are available on-line at http://www.un.org/documents/scres.htm, arranged according to resolution number and year in which it was adopted. 6. Department of Public Information, United Nations, “Former Yugoslavia— UNPROFOR,” available on-line at http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/ dpko/co_mission/unprof_b.htm. See also Norbert Both, From Indifference to Engagement: The Netherlands and the Yugoslav Crisis 1990–1995, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2000. 7. Peace and Security Section of the United Nations Department of Public Information, “United Nations Preventive Deployment Force: Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,” available on-line at http://www.un.org/ Depts/DPKO/Missions/unpred_b.htm. 8. For an excellent analysis of the relationship of regional actors to UN actions, see Davis Brown, “The Role of Regional Organizations in Stopping Civil Wars,” Air Force Law Review, Vol. 41, 1997. 9. Report of the Secretary-General Pursuant to SC Resolution 959, S/1993/1389. 10. There are many excellent accounts of the fall of Srebrenica. Among the best are David Rohde, Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe’s Worst Massacre Since World War II, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997 and Jan Willem Honig and Norbert Both, Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime, New York: Putnam, 1997. See also The Betrayal of Srebrenica: Why did the Massacre Happen? Will It Happen Again? Hearing before the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights of the
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11. 12.
13. 14. 15. 16. 17.
18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.
30. 31.
32.
33.
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Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives, 105th Congress, Second Session, 31 March 1998. For information on the background of the ICTY and the cases it has prosecuted, see http://www.un.org/icty/glance/index.html. For a detailed analysis of the Radislav Krsti´c case, see Frances T. Pilch, “The Prosecution of the Crime of Genocide in the ICTY: The Case of Radislav Krstic,” forthcoming in USAFA Journal of Legal Studies, Spring 2003. Ibid., p. 193. Paul F. Diehl, International Peacekeeping, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994, p. 193. Ashton, “Making Peace Agreements Work,” p. 773. Ibid., p. 196. John A. MacInnis, reported comments on panel entitled “The Role of the United Nations with Respect to the Means for Accomplishing the Maintenance and Restoration of Peace,” Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law, Vol. 26, Fall 1996, p. 3. Ramsbothan and Woodhouse, Humanitarian Intervention in Contemporary Conflict, p. 167. John Hillen, Blue Helmets: The Strategy of UN Military Operations, Washington and London: Brasseys, 1998, p. 154. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 155. Ashton, “Making Peace Agreements Work,” p. 781. Hillen, Blue Helmets, p. 156. Ashton, “Making Peace Agreements Work,” p. 780. Ibid., p. 195. Hillen, Blue Helmets, p. 164. Ruth Wedgewood, “Prosecuting War Crimes,” Military Law Review, Vol. 149, Summer 1995, p. 6. Stuart Gordon, “Icarus Rising and Falling: The Evolution of UN Command and Control Structures,” in D. S. Gordon and F. H. Toase, eds., Aspects of Peacekeeping, London: Frank Cass, 2001, p. 33. Hillen, Blue Helmets, pp. 142–3. Hearing on The United Nations, NATO, and the Former Yugoslavia, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Washington, DC, 6 April 1995, p. 8. Available on-line at http://www.house.gov/csce/ UNNATOandFORMERYUGO4_6-95.htm. Report of the Secretary-General Pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 5335 (1998), referred to as the Srebrenica Report, par. 497. Available on-line at http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/reports/UNsrebrenicareport.htm. For an excellent analysis of the problems of cooperation and interoperability between not only NATO and the UN, but also with humanitarian aid agencies, WEU forces, and individual states, see Leurdijk, The United Nations and NATO in Former Yugoslavia.
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34. Hillen, Blue Helmets, p. 173. 35. Satish Nambiar, the first force commander and head of mission of UNPROFOR (March 1992–March 1993), notes that the gap between civilian and military components in complex operations may in fact be widening rather than narrowing. Nambiar, Thakur and Schnabel, United Nations Peacekeeping Operations, p. 177. 36. Hillen, Blue Helmets, p. 143. 37. SCR 836 (1993), par. 9. 38. SCR 836 (1993), par. 10. 39. Srebrenica Report, par. 202. 40. “Ebbing Force,” Economist, 8 July 1995, 44. 41. UN Doc. S/23900. 10, 12 May 1992. 42. Robert B. Oakley, Michael J. Dziedzic, and Eliot M. Goldberg, eds., Policing the New World Disorder: Peace Operations and Public Security, Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1998, p. 269. 43. Yasushi Akashi, “The Politics of UN Peacekeeping from Cambodia to Yugoslavia,” in Thakur and Schnabel, United Nations Peacekeeping Operations, p. 152. 44. Ibid. 45. United Nations Protection Force Former Yugoslavia Profile, available on-line at http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/co_mission/unprof_p.htm. 46. Srebrenica Report and Report of the Panel on United Nations Peacekeeping Operations, A/55/305-S2000/809, referred to as the Brahimi Report, available on-line at http://www.un.org/peace/reports/peace_operations/. 47. Srebrenica Report, par. 482. 48. Srebrenica Report, par. 493. 49. Srebrenica Report, par. 496. 50. Srebrenica Report, par. 503. 51. United Nations, Force Commander’s End of Mission Report 1 (1996), cited in Ashton, “Making Peace Agreements Work,” p. 770. 52. UNHCR, “The Balkans,” available on-line at http://www.unhcr.org. 53. Brahimi Report, par. 1.
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CHAPTER 7
International Norms of Territorial Integrity and the Balkan Wars of the 1990s* Mikulas Fabry
Introduction
T
his chapter investigates the role of post-1945 norms, rules, and practices pertaining to state recognition of territorial claims in the Balkan wars of the last decade. These moral and legal norms—Robert Jackson and Mark Zacher call them “the territorial covenant”—stipulate that territorial change attained through the use of military force cannot be accepted by the society of states as valid.1 They outlaw conquest and permit only territorial modifications attained by way of consent of all parties involved. The same applies to non-sovereign jurisdictions that become sovereign: unless their governments decide otherwise, their former administrative borders must remain intact. I suggest that territorial norms had a significant presence in external attitudes toward the Yugoslav wars and that the actual international decisions with respect to the Balkans were by and large consistent with these norms. There are two types of territorial norms. Constitutive norms lay down how a state may come into being or cease to exist, what entity qualifies as a legitimate claimant of statehood and in what borders a new state can be recognized as sovereign. Territorial regulative norms spell out modus operandi for changing title to a particular territorial segment
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between already established states. In Croatia and Bosnia–Herzegovina both types of norms were relevant, in Kosovo only the former. In Croatia and Bosnia–Herzegovina the territorial covenant meant that the Serbian drive to forcibly change the borders of these republics and the Croatian effort to attach parts of the Herzegovina region to Croatia were repudiated internationally. Whereas Western states and international organizations displayed plenty of expediency, inconsistency, and wavering toward the Balkans, this position remained principled and consistent throughout the wars in the two republics. Yet one would be hard-pressed to find any sustained inquiry into the insistence on Croatian and Bosnian territorial integrity in the vast literature on the two conflicts. If the policy is acknowledged, the tendency is to dismiss it casually as misguided, especially in regard to Bosnia,2 to remain ambivalent,3 or, much more frequently, to take for granted that it was right. Whatever their view, scholars typically concentrate on the means that were used or could have been used to bring peace to the region, reflecting less on the normative foundations of that peace. This is also true of some direct participants in the events.4 Yet, such a reflection is much needed. While the business of foreign policy makers is to make judgments on whether an intended course of action is in the interest of their country, they do not make these assessments without, or in isolation from, considerations of international morality and law. Even wars over territory take place within a framework of norms that shape and limit political choices. Those making decisions on the Yugoslav wars confronted the general inadmissibility of forcible territorial acquisition. International territorial norms were upheld in Croatia and Bosnia even though they were not necessarily followed by peace in the Balkans. In fact, the manner in which external actors drew on them did, certainly in the short run, more harm than good. The decisions to recognize the two republics in their previous republican borders—coming when they did— made the underlying reasons for hostilities in Croatia more difficult to address and a war in Bosnia much more likely to erupt. Yet after Croatia and Bosnia–Herzegovina had been recognized as sovereign, international society did not allow their forcible partition. The insistence on territorial norms was maintained even though their infringement might have brought at least short-term termination of violence or, in the case of Bosnia, perhaps even prevention of its further escalation. Given their relatively modest military capability, the Bosnian Muslims could not have easily challenged an early reversal on the recognition of Bosnia by way of international endorsement of Serbian and Croatian territorial gains.
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In Kosovo there were no attempts to change the province’s status without the acquiescence of the FRY, despite the fact that NATO intervened militarily against the FRY. Whereas most members of the Contact Group in Rambouillet wanted Yugoslav commitment that the province’s final status would be negotiable in three years’ time, once the Belgrade government refused, the matter was not further pressed. UNSC resolutions both prior to and following the intervention stress that Kosovo is an integral part of the FRY. Yugoslavia’s sovereignty over the province has been routinely trivialized as a “technicality,” but the stated purpose of the interim UN administration is to make Kosovo effectively autonomous within the FRY. The Yugoslav Conflict and its International Dimension The dispute in Yugoslavia was fundamentally about who has the right to govern whom, where, and in what form. The war broke out as a result of the conflicting secessionist and irredentist claims of its peoples. However, in the society of states there can be no permanent and legitimate territorial change without international recognition.5 This is because “Boundaries are . . . international and not merely national. They mark the limits of the territorial jurisdictions and the domestic society of sovereign states; but they also constitute an institution shared by states and form an important part of an international society between states.”6 Something comparable can be said of a territory’s acquisition of sovereign status, for sovereignty, too, pertains to the state and the society of states. Though the impulse to achieve sovereignty ordinarily comes from within a political community—through assertion of its constitutional separateness—a state cannot be said to be sovereign only in terms of its constitution. In addition to the internal aspect of sovereignty established by domestic law, there is an external aspect delineated by international law. The nexus linking them is state recognition. Sovereignty in international law is attained when the already existing states deem a claimant to have sovereign rights and duties, or international legal personality. The common practice of using quotation marks differentiates those who merely self-proclaim to be sovereign from those who are actually sovereign in the eyes of international law. Since Croatia and Bosnia ultimately became sovereign in terms of international law and Kosovo did not and since the territories of Croatia, Bosnia, and the FRY were not allowed to diminish as a result of secessions or acquisitions by outsiders, it is indispensable to investigate the role of foreign states and relevant intergovernmental organizations. It is above all crucial
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to assess if they were guided by anything other than their momentary whims and interests when they recognized certain claims and denied others. The Global Territorial Covenant The beginnings of the post-1945 territorial integrity norm may be traced to the prevalent opinion in some Allied countries in the aftermath of World War I that territorial enlargement by force is unacceptable and that territorial modifications can be made only with the consent of all parties involved. In Article 10 of its Covenant, the League of Nations sanctioned the territorial status quo as a criterion of international legality and legitimacy. The illegitimacy of conquest, however, hardly took root during the 1930s as not only the former central powers, but also several former allied states rejected it in practice. The settlement of World War II moved the world closer to the hopes of those who 20 years earlier had pleaded that wars of conquest be made unlawful. With a few exceptions, international borders in Europe after 1945 reflected those of the 1919 settlement. The inadmissibility of territorial change by force became entrenched in numerous international documents, most notably the UN Charter, UN General Assembly Resolutions 2625 and 3314, and, in the European context, the Helsinki Final Act and the Charter of Paris for a New Europe. Resolution 2625 on Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States, for instance, states that it is a basic principle of international law that “the territory of a State shall not be the object of acquisition by another state resulting from the threat or use of force” and posits that “no territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force shall be recognized as legal.” The Helsinki Final Act specifies, “frontiers can [only] be changed . . . by peaceful means and agreement.” The constitutive aspects of the territorial covenant can be traced back to 1945. Products of Axis aggression such as the Independent State of Croatia or Manchukuo were, for example, denied their continued existence. More importantly for the postwar development, colonial territories that came to be regarded as possessing the right of selfdetermination could become sovereign only in their colonial boundaries. This norm, called uti possidetis juris, prescribes that former administrative borders are in the absence of voluntary agreement by a new sovereign government to do otherwise, inviolable. The growing reliance on uti possidetis, first used as a rule of international law in nineteenth-century Latin America, seems to have been
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propelled by two beliefs. One was that in case of disputes, the existing colonial boundaries provide the only basis for preventing social disintegration and maintaining international order.7 It was desirable to have stable states. By restricting the number of peoples entitled to selfdetermination, the society of states was to prevent multiple partitions into smaller and smaller units and guarantee that international law did not become “a suicide club for states.”8 The second was a normative shift from the belief, evident in the 1919 settlement, that ethno-national self-determination may sometimes be optimal. Despite the ideological divisions of the Cold War, virtually all countries extolled the virtues of multiethnic society and civic nationhood. Insistence on the political exclusivity of ethno-nations was seen as a recipe for catastrophe and a direct cause of World War II. Jackson and Zacher summarize the post-1945 territorial constitutive and regulative norms as follows: (1) only existing international boundaries are legal and legitimate; (2) borders can be changed only with the explicit consent of all states affected by the change; (3) change of borders by way of armed force is illegal and illegitimate; (4) the only recognized political community for international purposes is the state with its juridical boundaries; (5) colonialism is illegal and illegitimate; and (6) a norm that does not have “the strength of those noted above, but does deserve mentioning”: secessions are to be dissuaded, but if they appear inescapable, the international borders of a new state ought to reflect the internal administrative boundaries of the state from which it seceded.9 While this is an elegant synopsis of territorial norms, the norm against secession is more robust than Jackson and Zacher would allow. There has been only one instance of widespread recognition of a seceding entity without the approval of its government, that of Bangladesh from Pakistan in the early 1970s.10 The end of the Cold War has not changed the norm. Self-determination has not been reinterpreted to sanction recognition of unilateral secession in some instances. The Charter of Paris reaffirmed in 1990 the right of peoples to selfdetermination but it stressed, as did General Assembly Resolution 2625 and other UN texts, that the realization of the right must be “in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations and with the relevant norms of international law, including those relating to territorial integrity of states.” The breakup of the Soviet Union or Czechoslovakia were instances of state dissolution, not secession.11 International society treated the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the same way. Conceptually, the distinction between secession and dissolution may be murky because
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dissolution of the original state and its central government can begin as a unilateral secession by one or more of its parts. But state practice does distinguish between an attempt at secession and a successful secession: the latter is achieved only when a seceding entity is recognized internationally without the consent of its legitimate sovereign government. The Territorial Covenant and the Wars in Croatia and Bosnia–Herzegovina How was the territorial covenant relevant in the Balkan wars of the early 1990s? From the first salvo in Croatia in July 1991 until the signature of the DPA in November 1995 international society insisted that borders between the federal republics and then sovereign states not be allowed to change by force. As for the constitutive aspect of the Yugoslav disintegration, the separating republics were initially treated by outside actors as integral parts of Yugoslavia and their acts were described as attempts to secede, but as Macedonia and Bosnia had joined Slovenia and Croatia in declaring their sovereignty and had ceased to retain their officials in federal agencies, the SFRY became regarded as a federation in the process of dissolution and its government was no longer treated as legitimate. Though this was a novelty in the practice of state recognition that may indicate evolution of the post-1945 territorial norms, it must be stressed that the collapse of Yugoslavia was itself unprecedented. Never before had a majority of constituent units, comprising the majority of the population and territory, attempted to secede from a federal state. It is extremely significant that no foreign country protested against portraying the Yugoslav breakup as a case of dissolution and that the claims of Serbia and Montenegro that they represented a legal continuation of the SFRY were uniformly rebuffed. Only with their federation dissolving did the republics become eligible for recognition. Because Croatia and Bosnia did not give consent to loss of parts of their territory, their borders became international ones. They became, as a matter of international legal right, safeguarded against secessions and external territorial designs. International society opposed the independence of Slovenia and Croatia when these republics announced that they would declare it unilaterally. On 19 June 1991, the 35-member Council of Foreign Ministers of the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) expressed support for the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia. During his visit to Belgrade on 21 June US Secretary of State James Baker made it clear that “neither the US nor any other country will recognize unilateral
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secession” of Slovenia and Croatia.12 He did not deny that the Yugoslav republics had a right of self-determination, but insisted that “selfdetermination cannot be unilateral and must be pursued by dialogue and peaceful means,” and reminded republican and federal leaders of “[a principle] of the Helsinki Conference” that “borders must not be changed except by consent.”13 The USSR and the EC voiced identical sentiments; the EC by way of a statement of its foreign ministers two days before the declarations of independence of 25 June.14 After his return from Belgrade, Baker suggested to President George H.W. Bush that the United States should “work with the Europeans to maintain a collective nonrecognition policy against any republic that unilaterally declared independence.”15 After the fighting began, the EC with the blessing of the United States, the USSR, CSCE, and the UN, got involved. Though its activities helped to terminate the confrontation in Slovenia, the efforts to mediate between the government in Zagreb and the Croatian Serb paramilitaries and the JNA proved futile. The Brussels Declaration of 27 August 1991 was the first significant EC statement on the mounting violence in Croatia. It censured the Serb irregulars for trying to solve problems of “a new constitutional order through military means” and condemned the JNA’s support of the Serbian side.16 For this chapter, though, the most notable are the following lines—they would, in one way or another, be later reproduced in most EC, UN, NATO, CSCE, WEU, Group of Seven, or Organization of the Islamic Conference documents on the Balkan crises: [The Community and its member States] remind those responsible for the violence of their determination never to recognize changes of frontiers which have not been brought about by peaceful means and by agreement . . . The Community and its member States will never accept a policy of fait accompli. They are determined not to recognize changes of borders by force and will encourage others not to do so either. Territorial conquests, not recognized by the international community, will never produce the kind of legitimate protection sought by all in the new Yugoslavia.17
The escalating conflict in Croatia was difficult to curb, but the international legal personality of the SFRY remained unaffected either by the fighting or by an additional declaration of sovereignty, this time by Macedonia. Soon, however, that legal standing began to look increasingly tenuous. On 3 October, the representatives of Montenegro, Serbia, and the Serbian-controlled provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina on the SFRY presidency met in the absence of members from the other four
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republics. They determined that the country was in the condition of “an immediate threat of war” and, on that ground, decided to conduct the affairs of the SFRY by only “the majority of votes of the Presidency members present and voting.”18 On 5 October EC foreign ministers rejected “the seizure of the Presidency by Montenegro and Serbia, which has already been condemned by other Republics of Yugoslavia,” and stated that they were “not prepared to acknowledge any decisions taken by a body which can no longer pretend to speak for the whole of Yugoslavia.”19 On 28 October the EC called the decision a “coup d’etat.”20 In his 25 October report to the Security Council, UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuéllar described the SFRY presidency as “rump” and observed that “JNA no longer has political direction from a civilian authority that enjoys the support of all the republics and all communities of the Federation.”21 On 11 October, the “rump” presidency, in conformity with the positions of Serbia and Montenegro, rejected accusations of seizure and warned that any attempt to recognize unilateral secessionist acts would be flagrant interference into the SFRY’s internal affairs and “an act directed against its international subjectivity and territorial integrity.”22 Still, at a 4 October meeting at The Hague, which included Presidents Slobodan Miloˇsevi´c and Franjo Tudjman, Serbia agreed that what was needed was “a political solution on the basis of the perspective of recognition of the independence of those republics wishing it, at the end of a negotiating process conducted in good faith.”23 This process was to involve “all parties concerned” and recognition was to be granted as part of “the framework of a general settlement” which would permit “no unilateral changes in borders.” On 8 November, the EC repeated “the prospect of recognition of the independence of those republics wishing it can only be envisaged in the framework of an overall settlement.”24 The negotiations at the EC peace conference, however, bore no fruit. Two issues in particular were plaguing the talks and needed to be referred to the Badinter Commission of jurists established by the conference: one was the legal description of events in Yugoslavia and the other the status of Serbs outside Serbia. On the first one, Serbia and Montenegro contended that the four republics sought to secede from Yugoslavia and that the SFRY continued to exist. In contrast, the other four republics maintained that Yugoslavia had been breaking up as a result of concurring exercise of the right to self-determination by the majority of republics. The question was not one of secession and, therefore, the republics were to be considered equal successors to the SFRY, without any of them being able to claim its continuation.
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The Commission’s judgment was made public on 7 December as Opinion No. 1. After noting that four republics expressed their desire for independence, the justices observed that “the composition and workings of the essential organs of the Federation . . . no longer met the criteria of participation and representativeness inherent in a federal State.”25 Their conclusion was that “the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is in the process of dissolution” and that “it is incumbent upon the Republics to settle such problems of state succession as may arise from this process in keeping with the principles and rules of international law.” According to James Crawford, the rationale for Opinion No. 1 was that “in the absence of a reconstituted federal government which represented the population of Yugoslavia as a whole, there was no government which had the authority to seek to prevent the separation of the constituent republics, and that such separation would lead inevitably to the disappearance of the Socialist Federal Republic itself.”26 Be that as it may, the only parties disagreeing with the opinion were the rump presidency and the two republics sitting on it. The rest of the world identified as the cause of the SFRY breakup “a non-functional government rather than the secession of several republics.”27 Foreign states and intergovernmental organizations declined to treat the federal authority composed of Serbia and Montenegro as the legitimate government of the SFRY. This implied that any decision on recognition could be made, at least as far as international law was concerned, without seeking consent of this government.28 A no less critical item that had to be agreed upon in any overall settlement was that of the Serbian population in Croatia and Bosnia and, by extension, the boundaries of those republics. Serbs in Croatia were engaged in rebellion against Zagreb and in this they were supported by Serbia and what remained of the federal government, the former arguing at the EC conference on 8 October that “it was essential for all Serbs to live in one state, not in number of independent republics bound by little more than interstate relations.”29 The Bosnian Serb deputies in the Sarajevo parliament boycotted the vote on the republic’s declaration of sovereignty, denouncing it as an unconstitutional act contravening the three-nation consensus principle, and established their own “Assembly of the Serbian people of Bosnia–Herzegovina.” They also announced a referendum for November on remaining in Yugoslavia to be held in Serb-inhabited regions. The question of the rights of the Croatian and Bosnian Serbs was thus of utmost urgency. As he inquired into the status of the SFRY, Lord Peter Carrington, the head of the EC peace conference, also requested
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the Badinter Commission to provide an opinion on Serbia’s question: “Does the Serbian population in Croatia and Bosnia–Herzegovina, as one of the constituent peoples of Yugoslavia, have the right to self-determination?” All republics save Serbia and Montenegro argued no: that right belonged to the republics and all citizens within their boundaries. On 18 December 1991, the rump SFRY presidency put forward this position: The right of self-determination can only be exercised by a people in the sense of the nation and not in the sense of “demos.” This means that a decision based on the said right cannot be made by a vote of all citizens of a particular region, republic or state, except if they are populated by only one people, i.e. nation. Otherwise, the said right would be transformed into self-determination of citizens, instead of the people in the sense of a nation. Neither can this decision be made by the republican assembly (parliament) because it is also an assembly of citizens, rather than a one-nation assembly.
The presidency argued emphatically that the right of self-determination applied to ethnos (i.e. the ethno-nation) as opposed to demos (i.e. all citizens of a particular republic or the civic nation), that the Serbs of Croatia and Bosnia had the right of self-determination as a constituent nation of Yugoslavia and of those republics, and that they had to be, as a result, consulted on their wishes in separate Serbian, not all-republican, referenda.30 The Commission, in Opinion No. 2 of 11 January 1992, asserted that “. . . it is well-established that, whatever the circumstances, the right to self-determination must not involve changes of existing frontiers at the time of independence (uti possidetis juris) except where the States concerned agree otherwise.” 31 In the absence of such agreement, it contended, the Serbs in the two republics were only entitled “to all the rights accorded to minorities and ethnic groups under international law . . .” In Opinion No. 3, released on the same day as a response to Serbia’s query whether its internal borders with Croatia and Bosnia could be regarded as frontiers in terms of public international law, the Commission maintained that “except where otherwise agreed, the former boundaries become frontiers protected by international law.” It then underlined the global character of uti possidetis: Uti possidetis, though initially applied in settling decolonization issues in America and Africa, is today recognized as a general principle, as stated by the International Court of Justice in its Judgment of 22 December 1986 in the case between Burkina Faso and Mali (Frontier Dispute, (1986) ICJ
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Reports 554 and 565): “Nevertheless the principle is not a special rule which pertains solely to one specific system of international law. It is a general principle, which is logically connected with the phenomenon of the obtaining of independence, wherever it occurs. Its obvious purpose is to prevent the independence and stability of new States being endangered by fratricidal struggles . . .”32
The Commission also noted that “the principle applies all the more readily to the Republics since . . . Article 5 of the Constitution of the SFRY stipulated that the Republics’ territories and boundaries could not be altered without their consent” and underscored that “according to a wellestablished principle of international law the alteration of existing frontiers or boundaries by force is not capable of producing any legal effect.” Many Serb politicians were enraged by these verdicts and vowed to ignore them. Offers of recognition of Bosnian and Croatian sovereignty without some sort of prior settlement with Serbia and the Serbs of the two republics were thus bound to create, especially in the still-peaceful Bosnia, a highly explosive environment. Yet this is exactly took place in the end. With no settlement on the future of Yugoslav republics and armed with the Badinter Commission opinion that the SFRY was in the process of dissolution, the EC changed its 8 November position. On 16 December 1991, the EC proposed in its “Declaration on Yugoslavia” to recognize independence of all republics wishing it, provided that they fulfilled the “Guidelines on the Recognition of New States in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union.” Among others, the republics had to pledge they had no territorial ambitions vis-à-vis their neighbors and respected the inviolability of all frontiers, and adopt extensive minority rights legislation in line with the strictest CSCE criteria. The main driving force behind the shift in EC policy was Germany. The Bonn government became strongly convinced that the fighting in Yugoslavia was a consequence of “Serbian aggression.” It contended that “preventive recognition” would have a constitutive effect and provide legal grounds for declaring the presence of the JNA in Croatia an unsolicited intervention against a sovereign country. International law allows in such a case counter-intervention, including all forms of foreign military assistance, against the intervening state. Germany’s foreign minister of the day, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, writes that his government worked on the assumption that “delaying recognition would lead to further escalation of violence by Yugoslavia’s People’s Army, since the troops would necessarily regard our refusal to recognize the republics as an encouragement for their policy of conquest toward Croatia.”33
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The German initiative within the EC was resisted most strongly by the United States and the UN. While not rejecting recognition of Yugoslav republics in principle, UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuéllar in his letter to the Dutch foreign minister (the Netherlands at the time held the EC presidency) of 10 December, expressed apprehension that premature recognition of some of them without an overall settlement could be a “potential time bomb.”34 He added: Let me be clear: I am not in any way calling into question the principle of self-determination which is enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations. However, I am deeply worried that any early, selective recognition could widen the present conflict and fuel the explosive situation especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina . . .
Lord Carrington, opposing the planned decision of his own organization, wrote to the Dutch minister on 2 December that premature recognition of Croatia by the EC “might well be the spark that sets Bosnia–Herzegovina alight.”35 Cyrus Vance, the UN envoy for Yugoslavia, assessed the situation in a 5 December conversation with US Ambassador Warren Zimmermann in these terms: “My friend Genscher is out of control on this. What he is doing is madness.”36 Carrington and Vance wanted recognition to be withheld until the Yugoslav republics had all agreed on their mutual relationships. To do it before meant, in their view, that the situation was being prejudged in favor of some and at the expense of others. And that promised more war. Prophetically, Zimmermann himself cabled to Washington on 20 December that “let nobody believe that the ten thousand or so who have died so far [in Croatia] mean that violence has reached its peak. A war in Bosnia could increase that number tenfold.”37 These voices were ignored and Croatia was recognized first by Germany on 23 December and then by the other 11 EC member states on 15 January 1992.38 The German government did not even wait for, and others did not take into account, the Badinter Commission’s advice as to the suitability of Croatia for recognition. Opinion No. 5, released four days before EC recognition, actually suggested that the Croatian Constitution did not provide sufficient guarantees for protection of minorities and that, hence, Croatia did not meet all the conditions listed in the EC’s own “Guidelines.” The EC heeded the advice of the Badinter Commission’s Opinion No. 4 of 11 January 1992 that Bosnia should not be recognized since “the will of the peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina” to constitute a “sovereign and independent State cannot be held to have been fully
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established.”39 The EC and the United States pressed the Sarajevo government to hold a referendum on independence similar to the ones in Slovenia and Croatia. But the difficulty with the plebiscite, held on 29 February–1 March, was that it was predicated on the simple majority of all citizens, a principle the Bosnian Serbs, a constituent nation of the republic, fervently rejected as contrary to the Bosnian constitution.40 Zimmermann’s admonition of the leader of Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadˇzi´c—“why do not you participate in the referendum on independence and come to terms with the fact that with 30 percent of the population Serbs cannot be expected to dictate the outcome?”— might have been grounded in a sound civic precept but, given the Bosnian consociational system in which two peoples could not impose a constitutional change on the third one, it was fundamentally misguided.41 Stipe Mesi´c, the last president of the SFRY presidency and current president of Croatia, warned in a 15 February speech that holding a referendum on which there was no consensus among the three Bosnian peoples would lead to war.42 Almost all Bosnian Serbs boycotted the “illegal” referendum and their leaders predicted disaster if the republic were to be recognized internationally. Even though the US administration heavily criticized Germany for breaking the collective nonrecognition consensus, it virtually replicated the German reasoning in Croatia and in March 1992 pressed for speedy recognition of Bosnia. This shift in the aftermath of the majority vote for independence took place even though one of the Bosnian peoples vehemently rejected independence. Zimmermann, echoing Genscher in December 1991, later wrote that “our view was that we might be able to head off a Serbian power grab by internationalizing the problem.”43 He elaborated: The Community’s action had changed the whole political landscape. Now the Europeans had recognized Croatia and Slovenia, and [Alija] Izetbegovic’s Bosnia was threatened with isolation in a Milosevicdominated “Serbo-slavia.” To keep Bosnia in international limbo would increase that isolation and assist Serbian designs . . . I believed that early Western recognition, right after the expected referendum majority with independence, might present Milosevic and Karadzic with a fait accompli difficult for them to overturn.44
The American conjectures that recognition would deter the Serbs from fighting failed miserably. As Steven Burg and Paul Shoup contend, no matter how hard it might have been to accomplish, “only a negotiated solution agreed by all three nationalist parties could avert the
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mounting crisis.”45 As in the case of the Croatian Serbs, the Bosnian Serbs feared living as a minority and would not watch passively while being reduced to that position. Hostilities in Bosnia began almost immediately after US and EC recognition on 7 April 1992. The country descended into a brutal war in which the Bosnian Serbs were supported by the JNA and the Bosnian Croats by the Croatian Army. What can one say at this point about international norms of territorial integrity? Do not the evident instrumental calculations of Germany and the United States actually demonstrate that norms did not count, the very opposite of this chapter’s argument? The answer is no. A norm establishes “rules of the game” or boundaries of permissible political activity and legitimate state interests. It prescribes broad standards of conduct that ought to be followed because the norm is deemed binding. But while norms constrain and enable political choices, they do not fully determine these choices. They are not and cannot be all-encompassing foreign policy guidelines. Being noninstrumental by definition, norms provide no guide to instrumental questions like timing or effectiveness, indispensable in any foreign policy decision. Put differently, one must distinguish between the stipulation of norms and acting in accordance with norms. The Badinter Commission clarified what the international norms of territorial integrity were in the circumstances of a country’s dissolution. Besides Serbia and Montenegro, no state disagreed with the panel’s opinions. The Commission implied that those Yugoslav republics wishing independence could be recognized in their previous borders without the assent of the rump SFRY government. However, the EC and other governments still had to decide when and how to recognize the republics. They had a choice of going the Genscher or Vance–Carrington–Perez de Cuéllar route. Perez de Cuéllar warned the UN members in his 25 October 1991 report on Yugoslavia that “wisdom and prudence are . . . required in connection with the seeking of recognition of unilateral declarations of independence.”46 These qualities might have been largely missing from the decision to recognize Croatia and Bosnia—which came about in the midst of dangerously unsettled conditions on the ground and without any commitment to intervene should the situation subsequently deteriorate—but that does not imply that norms played little or no role. One can clearly register the constitutive and prescriptive effects of Bosnian recognition as early as May 1992. Once recognized, Bosnia could seek membership in international organizations and on 22 May it became, along with Slovenia and Croatia, a member of the UN. Even before this act, UNSC Resolution 752 (15 May 1992) referred to
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“the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia” and demanded that all units of the JNA and the Croatian Army “now in Bosnia and Herzegovina must either be withdrawn, or be subject to the authority of the Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina, or be disbanded and disarmed.” Resolution 757 (30 May 1992) then imposed stringent sanctions on Serbia and Montenegro for failing to do this and stated that “no territorial gains or changes brought about by violence are acceptable . . . and the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina are inviolable.”47 Both resolutions also classified the JNA and Croatian Army presence in Bosnia as “interference from outside.” Given that the Council had not even reacted to the plea of Slovenian President Milan Kuˇcan on 28 June 1991—less than a year before Resolution 752—that the UN take action against the JNA “invasion and foreign occupation,” on the ground that the armed clashes in Slovenia constituted an internal Yugoslav matter, the content of these resolutions was indeed a remarkable reflection of the swift change in the political/juridical map of the Balkans.48 Over the three years of its duration the Bosnian war became a theme of protracted debates both within national governments and intergovernmental organizations. The five international peace plans, the lifting of the arms embargo so that the Bosnian Muslims could better defend themselves, the effect of the sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro, the plan for of a Muslim–Croat federation in the face of intense antagonism between the two communities, the competence of UN peacekeepers, the sagacity of creating UN safe areas when the publicly declared determination to enforce them appeared to lack credibility, and, most agonizingly, the question of direct military involvement, all generated heated discussions. Yet, whereas the extent of international responsibility toward the new state was much debated, the normative underpinnings on which the end of the war was to be based did not become subject to any real dispute. This is perhaps why they have not been widely emphasized by scholars. The repeated suggestion of prominent realist John Mearsheimer and his colleagues that an imposed partition of Bosnian territory is the only viable solution to the conflict was, for instance, never seriously considered.49 Mearsheimer might well have been right to believe that giving parts of Bosnia to Serbia and Croatia would decrease human and other costs both for the people of Bosnia and for outsiders involved, but these were not the only relevant considerations. There was nobody who would publicly endorse forcible changes of international borders. How is one to understand this persistent refusal to contemplate modifications of Bosnian borders? After all, whilst the International Conference
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on the Former Yugoslavia (ICFY) in August 1992 repudiated all “attempts to gain territory by the use of force” and called for recognition of Bosnia by “all the former Yugoslav Republics” as a condition of the peace settlement, it expressly allowed for frontier changes by mutual agreement.50 Yet even though the Sarajevo government could legally negotiate territorial changes with Croatia and the FRY, this option was never suggested to the Bosnian leadership by international diplomacy. Such a position would have inevitably implied that the multiethnic Bosnia was a failure and that ethnic cleansing, so universally reviled, was an authentic expression of the reluctance of the Bosnian peoples to live together in an independent country. UNSC Resolution 836 (4 June 1993) instead stressed the following general outline for the Bosnian settlement: The lasting solution to the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina must be based on the following principles: immediate and complete cessation of hostilities, withdrawal from territories seized by the use of force and “ethnic cleansing,” reversal of the consequences of “ethnic cleansing” and recognition of the right of all refugees to return to their homes, and respect for the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Throughout the war, the “Republic of Serbian Krajina,” the “Republika Srpska,” and the “Croat Community of Herzeg–Bosna” were denied foreign recognition. The Serb entities became, as did Serbia and Montenegro, which continued to support them, targets of debilitating international embargo. For the Krajina Serbs the war had a dire end: in August 1995 the Croatian Army bypassed the UN peacekeepers’ lines and attacked Serb-held regions in two out of four UNPAs. While the operation “Storm” evoked earlier scenes of ethnic cleansing undertaken by the Bosnian Serb Army against the Muslim population, international protests were tepid partly because the Croatian government was “reintegrating” its own, that is, internationally recognized, territory.51 The war in Croatia in effect ended with the exodus of most Krajina Serbs from Croatia. In Bosnia, the war ended after the position of the Bosnian Serb Army had weakened as a result of joint Muslim–Croat ground offensive and NATO air strikes in August 1995. The formal termination of the war came with the DPA of 21 November 1995 between Bosnia–Herzegovina, Yugoslavia, and Croatia, the two key articles of which read as follows: Article I . . . the Parties shall fully respect the sovereign equality of one another, shall settle disputes by peaceful means, and shall refrain from any
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action, by threat or use of force or otherwise, against the territorial integrity or political independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina or any other State. Article X The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina recognize each other as sovereign independent States within their international boundaries.
The Territorial Covenant and the Kosovo War If there had been an instance in the last decade’s long saga of Balkan conflicts when the international territorial norms could have been disregarded, Kosovo must surely have been it. After all, NATO not only intervened militarily against the very country the province had been part of; the Alliance also justified its attack by reprehensible treatment of the Kosovo Albanians in the hands of the Yugoslav forces. The alliance members could have endorsed independence of Kosovo without Yugoslavia’s consent on the basis of the unmistakable wishes of Kosovo Albanians, the absolute majority of the province’s population, to separate from Yugoslavia and the repression they had to endure, and then demand Yugoslav acquiescence as part of the conditions of truce. Yet this is not what took place. Serbia’s unscrupulous revocation of Kosovo’s autonomy in 1989 was met by the near total boycott of republican and federal institutions by the ethnic Albanian population. Still, when the “Republic of Kosova” was proclaimed sovereign following the September 1991 underground referendum on secession, no country except Albania recognized it. The Kosovo Albanian leadership applied for EC recognition in December 1991, right in the aftermath of the EC’s offer to recognize those Yugoslav republics wishing it, but the Community, as in the case of Croatian Serbs, refused even to consider the application.52 However one chose to read the 1974 federal constitution, neither the jurisdiction of Kosovo nor the Kosovo Albanians had a right of self-determination. Kosovo was not a republic of Yugoslavia but a province of one of its republics, and the Kosovo Albanians were not a constituent nation but a national minority. Later, in June 1992, the EC would issue a statement that plainly mischaracterized the real Kosovo Albanian aims: The Community and its member States recall that frontiers can only be changed by peaceful means and remind the inhabitants of Kosovo that their legitimate quest for autonomy should be dealt with in the framework of the EC Peace Conference. They also call upon Albanian government to exercise restraint and act constructively.53
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The unequivocal rejection of the Kosovo Albanians’ claims by international society left Yugoslavia at first unhindered in dealing with the adverse situation. When in early 1998 it had been confronted by armed attacks by the KLA, external involvement in the conflict increased sharply. The KLA’s guerrilla-style assaults were usually followed by reprisals of the government troops designed to stem the fledgling insurgency and to reestablish control of the whole Kosovo territory. Because they caused extensive suffering to the civilian population, Yugoslav counterinsurgency tactics were judged unacceptably harsh. Nevertheless, every international attempt to deal with the violent developments in Kosovo stressed that Kosovo was part of the FRY and that the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia was guaranteed. Even while UNSC Resolution 1160 (31 March 1998) imposed a mandatory arms embargo on Yugoslavia until Belgrade had “withdrawn the special police units and ceased action by the security forces affecting the civilian population,” it reaffirmed “the commitment of all Member States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.” Contrary to the aspirations of Kosovo Albanians, the Security Council, similarly to the EC in 1992, expressed sympathy only “for an enhanced status for Kosovo which would include a substantially greater degree of autonomy and meaningful self-administration”; that is, roughly the status Kosovo enjoyed under the 1974 SFRY constitution. These objectives did not change with the worsening situation in Kosovo and the NATO threat of force against the FRY issued in October 1998: in Resolutions 1199 (23 September 1998) and 1203 (24 October 1998) the Council repeated them in language identical to that of Resolution 1160. As international appeals for a cease-fire did not materialize, in February 1999 the Contact Group summoned Yugoslavia and the Kosovo Albanians to negotiate in Rambouillet, France. The parties were presented with a set of “non-negotiable principles/basic elements” for a settlement. These contained “territorial integrity of the FRY and neighbouring countries” and “high degree of self-governance for Kosovo.”54 One must mention in this respect that in January the NATO Council decided again that NATO’s secretary-general could authorize air strikes against the FRY. The aim was to compel Yugoslavia to come to France and to agree to an interim political settlement. Given the explicit threat, whatever consent the FRY might have given to change in Kosovo’s status or boundaries could not have easily been deemed to meet the condition of “mutual agreement” as understood by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969).55 Still, NATO member states had no intention of simply recognizing the province’s independence.
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This would have entailed acting against the wishes of its legitimate sovereign government and contravened the territorial covenant. The second draft of the Rambouillet document, which Russia claimed its envoy had been excluded from seeing before it was presented to the two parties, and which Yugoslavia claimed had not been negotiated but imposed, provided for an international conference on Kosovo’s ultimate status in three years.56 Its Article I (3) contained an ambiguous reference to “the will of the people” as forming a basis of the final settlement and, as Marc Weller writes, “the delegation of Kosovo obtained certain assurances that this formula actually establishes a legal right to hold a referendum of the people of Kosovo (as opposed, say, to the people of the FRY or the Serb Republic).”57 Being suspicious that this was the real meaning by the reference, the joint Yugoslav–Serb delegation rejected Article I and, ultimately, the entire Rambouillet proposal. What came after this rejection is not subject to debate. In March 1999 NATO, invoking the notion of humanitarian intervention, launched air strikes against the FRY. Operation Allied Force was halted only with the June cease-fire agreement, which obligated the Yugoslav forces to withdraw from Kosovo. After Rambouillet, however, Yugoslavia was confronted with no text that could have been interpreted as permitting change in Kosovo’s status without the consent of its government. Resolution 1244 (10 June 1999) that authorized the UN military and civilian presence in the province reaffirmed “the commitment of all Member States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.” The UN civilian administration was itself directed “to provide an interim administration for Kosovo under which the people of Kosovo can enjoy substantial autonomy within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.” Concluding Reflections International territorial norms had considerable bearing on the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s. The international response to these wars was not, as it is sometimes portrayed, entirely haphazard, opportunistic, or arbitrary. Still, it is undeniable that the way in which these norms were employed in Yugoslavia privileged certain claims over others and that this had deplorable repercussions. While it would be erroneous to say that reliance on international territorial norms “caused” the war in Bosnia, hasty recognition of Croatian and Bosnian sovereignty nevertheless added fuel to the fire and contributed to the immediate escalation of the conflict.
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However, once the society of states had extended recognition to Croatia and Bosnia in their former republican boundaries, this reality became paramount and no reversals were contemplated. The international legitimacy of the Bosnian state certainly carried more weight than its dramatic internal illegitimacy or, as numerous Croatian and Serbian politicians liked to put it, its “artificiality.” Regardless of how much the Bosnian Serbs and Croats, who together make up between 50 and 53 percent of Bosnia’s population, might have wished to unite with their “motherlands,” they were denied this choice and uti possidetis juris prevailed. Uti possidetis triumphed even in Kosovo where the beneficiary of this norm, the FRY, became the target of relentless bombing. The Zagreb government operated with the juridical reading of the right of self-determination in regard to Croatia and with the ethnonational interpretation in Bosnia. Similarly, Serbia invoked the former in Kosovo and the latter in Croatia and Bosnia. In all these cases, international society accepted the juridical arguments and spurned the ethno-national ones. The political identity of the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia, Croats in Bosnia, and Albanians in Kosovo derived from their ethnicity, but the pertinent identity for the outside world was their citizenship within internationally legitimate states. If the settlements of the Yugoslav wars, principally those concerning Bosnia and Kosovo, leave doubts as to their wisdom and viability, it is perhaps worthwhile to ask whether these doubts should be about the territorial norms, possibly outdated relics of the Cold War era, or the way they were handled by international diplomacy. I am firmly convinced that the latter is the case. The normative and practical emphasis on mutual consent with respect to international territorial disputes is better than a return to the “realist” pre-1914 right of conquest. When agreement on border changes is missing, territorial conservatism seeks to do away with countries’ belief that resort to military force can settle their quarrel. It seeks to avert a return to the age when power alone could, and often did, ensure a state’s expansion in size. Even so, the imperative task of diplomacy—indeed its raison d’être— is to examine all possible consensual outcomes and this was not done in any of the Yugoslav conflicts. While there is no guarantee that it would have brought peace, there was never any earnest attempt to find out whether there could be mutual agreement on border changes in Croatia and Bosnia. This option was not even kept as an alternative so as to allow diplomatic flexibility. Instead, recognition of these two republics was rushed through even though mutual agreement had been lacking and the recognizing countries had been deeply reluctant to get involved
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militarily should the violence worsen. In his memoirs David Owen, the Co-Chairman of the Steering Committee of the ICFY until June 1995, complained bitterly that My view has always been that to have stuck unyieldingly to the internal boundaries of the six republics within the former Yugoslavia . . . before there was any question of recognition of these republics, as being boundaries for independent states, was a folly far greater than that of premature recognition itself. The refusal to make these borders negotiable greatly hampered the EC’s attempt at crisis management in July and August 1991 and subsequently put all peacemaking from September 1991 onward within a straitjacket that greatly inhabited compromises between the parties in dispute.58
One can take exception to this argument by saying that opening the border issue would have benefited mostly Serbs (and Croats in Bosnia) who relied more on the use of force than on negotiating a mutually satisfactory solution. But this objection cannot but avoid facing the real source of discord in Croatia and Bosnia. If the dispute was primarily about statehood and borders, then a territorial compromise should have been seriously explored before granting these states international recognition. Would not have such a compromise in Bosnia, if the Bosnian Muslim leadership could have been persuaded by international diplomacy to think in that direction, been better than war, particularly when this war was anticipated so widely? Is not human life more important than the unity of a territory, even if that territory is inhabited by diverse and intermingled ethno-national groups? A bargain that could have given each group something—if not making all of them happy at least making each more or less equally unhappy—would have been preferable to ignoring the claims of some even at the high risk of worsening the conflict. The prospects for such an agreement diminished rapidly after recognition, but even then there would have been a moral and legal difference between one-sided international recognition of Bosnian Croat and Bosnian Serb entities against the wishes of the Sarajevo government and a friendly suggestion to the Bosnian Muslims that the mass-scale violence engulfing the country might be a rather compelling indication that the other two Bosnian peoples do not want to live with them in an independent state and that this must be dealt with politically. As grim as it may sound to a Western liberal ear, an early compromise on dividing Bosnia, while not bringing the good life of multiethnic society, could have at least prevented the bad life, of which the 1992–95 war was undoubtedly the worst example.
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In a speech during the Dayton negotiations US Secretary of State Warren Christopher said that the United States and the EU “share the conviction that Europe’s post–Cold War peace must be based on the principle of multiethnic democracy.”59 The final peace agreement and the new Bosnian constitution attached to it, written largely by State Department lawyers, reflect this creed. But what is a unified Bosnia good for when about half of its population is not even genuinely committed to its existence? James Lyon, the former director of an influential NGO’s Sarajevo office, concluded that “two of Bosnia’s three ethnic groups actively oppose Dayton and are prepared to wait until the international community withdraws and the agreement can be laid to rest . . . The Croat goal . . . is eventual union with Croatia, while the Serb nationalist goal . . . is eventual union with Serbia.”60 The real problem has not gone away. If anything, the political future of Kosovo is even more intractable and, again, largely because of diplomatic failures. Rather than to exhaust all diplomatic avenues with the Belgrade government, NATO intervened militarily on behalf of the Kosovo Albanians while being against what they had desired—independence. The alliance wanted Kosovo to continue to be part of the FRY, the very objective of the Yugoslav forces. Sharing a key goal with its adversary, NATO could not but undermine its prospects by using force against the FRY. As in Bosnia, far more attention was paid to the symptoms than to the causes of the disease. On the one hand, this is understandable: to spot the suffering of fellow human beings is much easier than to comprehend all the underlying issues that might have precipitated it. On the other hand, the gist of the Kosovo conundrum lay not in the Serb repression of the KLA and the civilians in the KLA-held areas or even in the subsequent misery of refugees, reprehensible as these were, but in the fact that the Kosovo Albanians did not wish to live under Yugoslav sovereignty. What is the long-term solution of the Kosovo problem if all related UN resolutions proclaim that Kosovo is an integral part of Yugoslavia and the Kosovo Albanians want more than ever out of it? The elimination of symptoms eliminates only symptoms, not the disease. The disease persists even if it remains, for the moment, asymptomatic. Notes * A longer version of this chapter was published in Global Society, Vol. 16, No. 2, 2002, pp. 145–74. I am grateful for the permission of the publisher to modify the original version.
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1. Robert Jackson and Mark Zacher, “The Territorial Covenant: International Society and the Stabilization of Boundaries,” Working Paper No. 15, Vancouver: Institute of International Relations, 1997. Zacher called them more recently “the territorial integrity norm.” See Mark Zacher, “The Territorial Integrity Norm: International Boundaries and the Use of Force,” International Organization, Vol. 55, No. 2, 2001, pp. 215–50. 2. See, for instance, John Mearsheimer and Robert Pape, “The Answer: A Partition Plan for Bosnia,” the New Republic, 14 June 1993, pp. 22–8; and John Mearsheimer and Stephen Van Evera, “When Peace Means War,” the New Republic, 18 December 1995, pp. 16–21. 3. For examples see Susan Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995; Susan Woodward, “Redrawing Borders in a Period of Systemic Transition,” in Milton Esman and Shibley Telhami, eds., International Organizations and Ethnic Conflict, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995; Steven Burg, “The International Community and the Yugoslav Crisis,” in Milton Esman and Shibley Telhami, eds., International Organizations and Ethnic Conflict, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995; and James Steinberg, “International Involvement in the Yugoslavia Conflict,” in Lori Damrosch, ed., Enforcing Restraint: Collective Intervention in Internal Conflicts, New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1993. 4. See, for instance, Richard Holbrooke, To End a War, rev. ed., New York: The Modern Library, 1999; and John Major, The Autobiography, London: Harper Collins, 1999, pp. 532 – 49. 5. Michael Akehurst, A Modern Introduction to International Law, 6th ed., London: Routledge, 1992, p. 152. 6. Robert Jackson, “Boundaries and International Society,” in B. A. Roberson, ed., International Society and the Development of International Relations Theory, London: Pinter, 1998, p. 159. 7. Malcolm Shaw, “The Heritage of States: The Principle of Uti Possidetis Juris Today,” British Year Book of International Law 1996, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997, p. 111. 8. Martin Rady, “Self-determination and the Dissolution of Yugoslavia,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2, 1996, pp. 379–89. 9. Jackson and Zacher, “The Territorial Covenant,” p. 10. 10. James Crawford, “State Practice and International Law in Relation to Secession,” British Year Book of International Law 1998, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999, pp. 114 – 15. 11. Both Czechoslovakia and the USSR dissolved constitutionally, by the agreement of their constituent republics. When the Slavic population of Moldova, the Abkhaz and Ossetian peoples of Georgia, and the Armenians of Nagorno–Karabach in Azerbaijan declared they did not want to be part of the newly sovereign states, their separatist or irredentist attempts were condemned internationally. The claims of sovereignty of the
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12.
13. 14. 15. 16.
17.
18. 19. 20. 21.
22. 23. 24. 25.
26. 27. 28.
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“Trans-Dniester Republic,” the “Abkhaz Republic,” and the “Republic of South Ossetia” were not recognized. James Baker, III with Thomas DeFrank, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace 1989 – 1992, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995, p. 482. Ibid., pp. 480, 482 – 3. Peter Radan, “The Badinter Arbitration Commission and the Partition of Yugoslavia,” Nationalities Papers, Vol. 25, No. 3, 1997, p. 543. Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy, p. 483. Snezana Trifunovska, ed., Yugoslavia Through Documents: From Its Creation to Its Dissolution, Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1994, p. 333. On 3 September 1991 participants at a CSCE meeting declared that territorial gains within Yugoslavia brought about by violence are unacceptable; this statement became explicitly noted in UNSC Resolution 713 (25 September 1991), the first UN resolution on the Balkan wars. “Public Statement—3 October 1991,” Review of International Affairs (Belgrade), Vol. 42, No. 995 – 7, October 5–November 5, 1991, p. 11. Trifunovska, Yugoslavia through Documents, p. 351. Ibid., p. 368. See paragraphs 21 and 31, UN Document S/23169; The secretary-general makes clear in his memoirs that the UN did not consider the SFRY presidency legitimate after what he says had been its hijacking by Serbia and Montenegro. One practical consequence of this “de-recognition” he mentions was that the letter of vice president of the Presidency Milan Vereus was not allowed to circulate as an official document in the Security Council. See Javier Perez de Cuellar, Pilgrimage for Peace: A SecretaryGeneral’s Memoir, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997, pp. 482, 487 – 8. Trifunovska, Yugoslavia through Documents, p. 354. See UN Document S/23169, Annex II. Trifunovska, Yugoslavia through Documents, pp. 379 – 80. Ibid., p. 417; Opinion No. 8 of 4 July 1992 further explained that “the existence of a federal state, which is made up of a number of separate entities, is seriously compromised when a majority of these entities, embracing a greater part of the territory and population, constitute themselves as sovereign states with the result that federal authority may no longer be effectively exercised.” See ibid., p. 635. Crawford, “State Practice and International Law in Relation to Secession,” p. 100. Paul Szasz, “Remarks,” Proceedings of the 88th Annual Meeting, April 6 – 9, 1994, Washington, DC: American Society of International Law, 1994, p. 47. Matthew Craven, “The European Community Arbitration Commission on Yugoslavia,” British Year Book of International Law 1995, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996, p. 367.
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29. Quoted in Laura Silber and Alan Little, The Death of Yugoslavia, rev. ed., London: Penguin Books, 1996, p. 192. 30. Trifunovska, Yugoslavia through Documents, pp. 478 – 9. 31. Ibid., pp. 474 – 5. 32. Ibid., p. 480. 33. Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Building a House Divided: A Memoir by the Architect of Germany’s Reunification, trans. Thomas Thornton, New York: Broadway Books, 1998, p. 489. 34. See UN Document S/23280, Annex IV (11 December 1991). 35. Quoted in Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, p. 184. 36. Warren Zimmermann, Origins of a Catastrophe, New York: Times Books, 1999, p. 177. 37. Ibid., p. 178. 38. Most EC states were very uneasy about recognition, but, following Germany’s notification that, if necessary, it would recognize Croatia unilaterally, they concurred to demonstrate the EC’s unity in foreign relations. In the wake of the Maastricht Treaty, the EC members did not want to be publicly seen as marring the prospects of the newly instituted “Common Foreign and Security Policy.” But privately grave doubts remained. François Mitterrand, the French president, asked in an early December newspaper interview whether states that were pressing for immediate recognition planned to dispatch troops to support the fact of Croat and Slovene statehood. Roland Dumas, his foreign minister, later said that by recognizing Croatia German diplomacy fueled the war in Bosnia. See, respectively, Thomas Grant, The Recognition of States: Law and Practice in Debate and Evolution, Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999, p. 175; and Michael Thumann, “Between Ambition and Paralysis—Germany’s Policy Toward Yugoslavia 1991– 93,” Nationalities Papers, Vol. 25, No. 3, 1997, p. 581. 39. Trifunovska, Yugoslavia through Documents, p. 486. 40. The Bosnian Croats participated in the referendum and voted for an independent Bosnia, but for tactical reasons. Croatia and those Bosnian Croats who wanted to amalgamate with Croatia thought that this goal would be easier to accomplish in a Bosnia that had already been separated from Yugoslavia. See Steven Burg and Paul Shoup, The War in Bosnia– Herzegovina: Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention, Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999, p. 107. 41. Zimmerman, Origins of a Catastrophe, p. 187. 42. Burg and Shoup, The War in Bosnia–Herzegovina, p. 108. 43. Quoted in Emil Nagengast, “German and U.S. Intervention Against Yugoslav Sovereignty,” in Andrew Valls, ed., Ethics in International Affairs, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000, p. 160. 44. Zimmerman, Origins of a Catastrophe, pp. 191 – 2. 45. Burg and Shoup, The War in Bosnia–Herzegovina, p. 105. 46. See paragraph 32, UN Document S/23169.
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47. Later, dozens of UNSC resolutions would repeat the commitment of UN member states to “the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the responsibility of the Security Council in this regard” and “preserving the territorial integrity of all the States [in the Balkan region] within their internationally recognized borders” (italics added). One text, Resolution 787 (16 November 1992), expressed deep concern at “the threats to the territorial integrity of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which, as a State Member of the United Nations, enjoys the rights provided for in the Charter of the United Nations” and affirmed that “any entities unilaterally declared or arrangements imposed in contravention [of Bosnia’s territorial integrity] will not be accepted.” 48. Perez de Cuéllar, Pilgrimage for Peace, p. 477; Silber and Little, The Death of Yugoslavia, p. 156; Steinberg, “International Involvement in the Yugoslavia Conflict,” p. 38. 49. See note 2 and John Mearsheimer, “The Only Exit from Bosnia,” the New York Times, 7 October 1997. 50. Trifunovska, Yugoslavia through Documents, pp. 701 – 2. 51. “Reintegration” was used, for instance, in the UN secretary-general’s report on Croatia to the Security Council. See paragraph 32, UN Document S/1995/730 (23 August 1995). 52. Roland Rich, “Recognition of States: The Collapse of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union,” European Journal of International Law, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1993, pp. 61 – 2. 53. Trifunovska, Yugoslavia through Documents, p. 615. 54. Quoted in Marc Weller, “The Rambouillet Conference on Kosovo,” International Affairs, Vol. 75, No. 2, 1999, p. 225. 55. Its Article 52 states that “a Treaty is void if its conclusion has been procured by the threat or use of force in violation of the principles of international law embodied in the Charter of the United Nations.” 56. Ruth Wedgwood, “NATO’s Campaign in Yugoslavia,” American Journal of International Law, Vol. 93, No. 4, 1999, p. 831. 57. Weller, “The Rambouillet Conference on Kosovo,” p. 245. 58. David Owen, Balkan Odyssey, updated ed., San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1997, p. 34; Owen discusses (pp. 32 – 5) what in retrospect was a very unique proposal of the Dutch government—at the time in charge of the EC presidency—that the option of boundary changes should be looked at. The Netherlands suggested in this 13 July 1991 document “a voluntary redrawing of internal borders as a possible solution” and pointed out that “if the aim is to reduce the number of national minorities in every republic, better borders than the present ones could be devised.” If the republics were to become independent, the proposal stressed, “the first principle of Helsinki should be applied, which means that the frontiers of Yugoslavia’s constituent republics can only be changed ‘in accordance with international law, by peaceful means and by agreement.’ ” One can only
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speculate what course the events would have taken had the Dutch proposition, introduced less than three weeks after the first shots in Slovenia, not been so promptly rejected by the other EC members on 29 July 1991. 59. Warren Christopher, In the Stream of History: Shaping Foreign Policy for a New Era, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998, p. 364. 60. James Lyon, “Will Bosnia Survive Dayton?” Current History, Vol. 99, No. 3, 2000, pp. 111 and 113.
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CHAPTER 8
The Balkan Wars and the International War Convention R. Craig Nation
Introduction
A
rmed conflict on the territory of the former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 2001 claimed over 200,000 lives, gave rise to atrocities unseen in Europe since the World War II, and left behind a terrible legacy of physical ruin and psychological devastation. A number of incidents during the conflict provided egregious examples of war crimes. In the spring and summer of 1992, Serb paramilitaries, sometimes abetted by the regular forces of the JNA, pursued a purposeful campaign of ethnic cleansing in the Drina valley and western Bosnia, killing the residents of occupied communities at random and forcing thousands into flight.1 On 16 April 1993, Croat forces perpetrated a deliberate massacre of the inhabitants of the predominantly Muslim village of Ahmi´ci in western Bosnia’s Laˇsva Valley, burning the village to the ground and dynamiting the minaret of the central mosque.2 After the fall of Srebrenica to the Army of the Serb Republic in July 1995, more than 8,000 prisoners were massacred while representatives of the international community looked on helplessly.3 These episodes were extreme cases, but they also typified patterns of abuse that characterized the entire Yugoslav conflict. In addition to the toll on human life, the new Balkan wars took on a cultural dimension, manifested by the intentional destruction of historical monuments and artistic treasures. It has been estimated that
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already by 1992 up to 70 percent of the architectural inheritance of Bosnia–Herzegovina had been damaged or destroyed, including over 300 mosques, 150 Orthodox churches, and 50 Catholic churches.4 Destruction of the Ivo Andri´c monument in Viˇsegrad by the Bosnian Muslims, the dynamiting of the sixteenth-century Ferhadija and Arnaudije mosques in Banja Luka by the Bosnian Serbs on the night of 5–6 May 1992, the Serb shelling of the Bosnian National Library, the Ve´cnica, in Sarajevo and the destruction of thousands of irreplaceable historical manuscripts on the night of 25–26 August 1992 immediately preceding the opening of the London Conference on Former Yugoslavia, the targeting of the sixteenth-century Old Bridge (Stari most) in Mostar by Croat artillery in November 1993—these are only particularly shocking examples of the widespread cultural vandalism.5 Most of these actions were in direct contravention of the 1954 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.6 Many had an explicitly anti-Muslim character, and were justified as acts of historical revenge directed against the Ottoman legacy, “the continuation in an extreme form of a process of de-Islamization that had begun decades earlier.”7 Though the Balkan wars were replete with rare inhumanity, they were not unique. The 1990s saw numerous regional conflicts—in Haiti, Colombia, Tajikistan, the Caucasus, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Rwanda, Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Congo among others—that were comparable to or, in some cases, more destructive than the Yugoslav imbroglio. Few of these conflicts have received anything like the intense scrutiny devoted to the Balkans, for reasons good and bad. The Balkans is a part of Europe, and therefore more accessible to the international media, and engagement by external powers, than conflicts waged in less developed and approachable regions. The atrocities committed in the Balkans were no more or less lamentable than those carried out in parallel conflicts in Africa, Asia, or the Americas, but they were prominently displayed and extensively discussed on televised news reports. The resulting impact on elite and public opinion made the Balkan conflict politically compelling—it was a war that could not be ignored. As a consequence of its visibility, and in view of the extraordinary abuses to which it gave rise, the Yugoslav conflict of the 1990s posed a particularly sharp challenge to the capacity of international law and institutions to address the problem of violence in the international system, in regard both to interstate conflict and cases of humanitarian abuse perpetrated by domestic authorities. The extensive media coverage
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extended to the Balkan conflict, the intensive involvement of the international community in the conflict management effort, the high threshold of humanitarian violations, and the new field for activism apparently opened up by the end of cold war bipolarity combined to make the conflict a particularly fertile ground for efforts to expand the modern war convention.8 The extent to which those efforts have or have not succeeded represents an important part of the legacy of the Balkan wars themselves, a test of the protracted effort by the international community to manage them, and a challenge for hopes to prevent comparable outbursts in the future. Attempts to broaden the capacity of international instances to punish violations of legal or humanitarian norms rest upon the universalistic presumption that in an increasingly interdependent international system common values must come to take precedence over the egoistic concerns of individual units. The goal is sometimes described as a shift from a “Westphalian” order, based upon the autonomy of nation-states in an anarchic system without effective supranational authority, toward an international society where at least some of the elements of domestic order pertain to the conduct of interstate relations as well. International reactions to the wars of Yugoslav succession embodied this argument in at least three ways. First, Western interventions were justified in the name of a doctrine of humanitarian intervention asserting that in cases of massive crimes against humanity, international instances and responsible national actors are obliged to respond, if need be in defiance of the presumption of sovereignty.9 Second, armed intervention and peace enforcement strategies were sanctioned as a legitimate use of force under the rubric of humanitarian war.10 Third, the law of war was broadened to encompass a growing body of international humanitarian law that demands more intrusive monitoring of national behavior, including the convocation of tribunals to prosecute violators.11 In the wake of the bloodletting in Bosnia–Herzegovina, the relevance of a doctrine of humanitarian intervention was widely asserted. The DPA, which brought an end to the fighting in Bosnia–Herzegovina in 1995, specifically committed its signatories “to cooperate in the investigation and prosecution of war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law,” and to “cooperate and provide unrestricted access to . . . the International Tribune for the Former Yugoslavia and other organizations authorized by the UN Security Council with a mandate concerning human rights or humanitarian law.”12 NATO’s war in Kosovo was formally justified as a humanitarian war, where the intervening powers were presumed to resort to arms, not in respect of
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national interest, but in response to intolerable ethical violations. The ICTY has been in existence for more than a decade and is mandated to impose legal accountability for humanitarian abuses. The Hague is now the site of history’s first international prison, and home to the first head of state ever placed on trial by an international tribunal on criminal charges.13 Inspired and influenced by these initiatives, a permanent ICC has been ratified by the UN, to take up its functions in The Hague during 2003.14 These are meaningful initiatives, but whether they will add up to a substantial extension of the international war convention remains unclear. The present international legal regime rests upon what is still a clumsy dichotomy between classic international law in the Grotian tradition understood as the law of states, and international humanitarian law seeking to limit sovereignty on behalf of universal norms with the human individual as its subject.15 The outcomes of external interventions in both Bosnia–Herzegovina and Kosovo, where peace enforcement strategies have given rise to de facto international protectorates with open-ended mandates without achieving notable progress toward the resolution of underlying differences, have been problematic, and many of the states that were the most adamant champions of a doctrine of humanitarian intervention in the specific circumstances of the Yugoslav conflict have since cooled to the idea as a general premise of statecraft. Alfred Rubin asserts a widely held conviction in arguing that to presume “enforcement of the international laws of war by the community of nations is consistent with the current international legal order of separate states” is “dubious” at best.16 War is not a humanitarian institution—the resort to arms may occasionally be just, or justifiable, but it is seldom humane. The ICTY is a contested institution, and the ICC lacks the support of many of the world’s most significant national actors, including China, the Russian Federation, and the United States. As the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s fade into the past, the emotional reactions that galvanized opinion will begin to pale as well. Many of the conceptual and legal innovations that were applied during the Yugoslav conflict remain insufficiently institutionalized, and few rest upon a substantial international consensus. The promulgation of a disputed doctrine of “preemptive war” by the US administration of George W. Bush has further muddied the waters.17 Assertions of humanitarian motivation, designated as proactive or “anticipatory,” can provide a convenient justification for preemptive war.18 But the concept of preemption, something quite different than the notion of anticipatory self-defense in the face of imminent
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aggression that has long been a part of customary international law, does not sit comfortably alongside the restrictions against the external use of force written into the UN Charter. The Bush administration’s National Security Strategy recognizes that anticipatory self-defense was traditionally justified on the basis of “the existence of an imminent threat—most often a visible mobilization of armies, navies, and air forces preparing to attack,” but argues that the premise needs to be adapted “to the capabilities and objectives of today’s adversaries.”19 The explanation is unlikely to convince, and concern for the possible abuse of a premise of humanitarian intervention as a justification for preemptive war may well increase skepticism concerning its relevance.20 Humanitarian Intervention There are few convincing precedents for the invocation of a legal right of humanitarian intervention. Cases of intervention that could with some justification have been grounded upon a logic of humanitarianism (Indian intervention in East Pakistan during 1971, Vietnamese intervention in Kampuchea in 1978, Tanzanian intervention in Uganda in 1979) were in fact not so justified. States have tended to prefer the selfdefense logic of Article 51 of the UN Charter as a more substantial and respectable foundation for unilateral military action. NATO intervention during the war in Bosnia–Herzegovina was also not formally sanctioned on the basis of a doctrine of humanitarian intervention. The use of force against the Serb faction (and occasional threats of a resort to force against the Croat and Muslim factions) came in response to violations of UN guidelines, and at UN request. In the Kosovo conflict, however, NATO intervention was not based upon any kind of convincing mandate from the UN or other relevant instance. UN SCRs Nos. 1199 and 1203 were cited by the United States and its allies as providing an “implicit” justification for intervention, but neither resolution specifically authorized a resort to force.21 Hilaire McCoubrey speaks of attempts to ground intervention in Kosovo upon formal UN approval as “vanishingly thin.”22 Rather, a right to resort to force was asserted unilaterally by NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana in a letter to the North Atlantic Council dated 9 October 1998 on the basis of an interpretation of Resolution No. 1199, which defined the situation in Kosovo as “a danger for peace and security in the region” but also cited the imminent danger of “a humanitarian disaster.” The circumstance of humanitarian necessity, according to Solana, provided NATO with “a legitimate basis for threatening the use of force, and if
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necessary a resort to force.”23 At the beginning of the bombing campaign, the notion would be elevated by British Prime Minister Tony Blair into an ethnical imperative to “act to save thousands of innocent men, women and children from humanitarian catastrophe,” grandiloquently described as a “new internationalism where the brutal repression of whole ethnic groups would not be tolerated.”24 Blair’s new internationalism implied a significant revision of classic just war theory, which demands right authority as a prerequisite for a resort to coercion. In cases of urgent humanitarian necessity, it was suggested, legal premises defining right authority, at least as they have been understood by the modern, or Westphalian tradition of international law, could be overridden and responsible nations or international organizations selfempowered to fight in a just cause. As Blair put it in a speech before the Economic Club of Chicago on 22 April 1999, a “doctrine of international community” had “shifted the balance between human rights and state sovereignty.”25 For the neo-Kantian Jürgen Habermas, the war in Kosovo had encouraged “a leap away from classical international law understood as a law of states toward the cosmopolitan law of a society of world citizens.”26 The doctrine of humanitarian intervention is compelling, but will not be convincing until several basic issues are resolved. The first is the issue of institutionalization. Ad hoc operations, such as that undertaken by NATO in Kosovo, do not rest upon a sound legal foundation. Article 2 paragraph 4 of the UN Charter forbids recourse to force by states with only two exceptions: (1) Self-Defense as referenced in Article 51 of the Charter (the same premise is mentioned in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty); and (2) Collective Security measures under the auspices of the Security Council as defined in Chapter VII. NATO demonstrated its sensitivity to the issue during the Kosovo conflict by tying its actions to earlier UN resolutions, but by any measure the campaign’s legality was suspect.27 In order to make a doctrine of humanitarian intervention more credible, international institutions and the collective security regime presided over by the UN will have to be considerably strengthened.28 The UN Charter should ideally be rewritten to sanction such interventions, and consistent procedures for identifying violations developed. Likewise, in the spirit of consistent institutionalization, it would be best if some kind of formally constituted intervention force, such as that recommended by former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghalli in his 1992 Agenda for Peace, could be placed at the disposition of the UN as an instrument of enforcement.29 Such procedures would represent significant steps away from the Westphalian
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premise of state sovereignty toward more robust world governance. For that very reason they are unlikely to be undertaken. The issue of standards represents another dilemma. When do humanitarian violations create a situation of urgent necessity sufficient to justify a resort to arms? During the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s, decisions to intervene were often accompanied by a conscious exaggeration of the extent of abuses in order to shape elite opinion and win public support. Effective manipulation of the media by Muslim and Croat opponents placed the Serb faction in the dock before the court of world opinion early on in the conflict, and predisposed public and elite opinion to assign the lion’s share of guilt for the abuses associated with the Yugoslav conflict to the Serb party. The conclusion was not altogether unjustified—the Serbs did indeed carry a heavy burden of responsibility. But all factions in the Balkan wars were to some extent complicit in war crimes. Robust intervention requires a target. In the confused circumstances of armed conflict, how can responsibility be assigned in cases where all belligerents are to some extent complicit in the illicit use of force? The use of the accusation of genocide is particularly notable in this regard. Serbia’s repression of the Kosovo Albanians was initiated on the basis of accusations of genocide in progress against the province’s Serb minority.30 During the run-up to the outbreak of war in the spring of 1991 all three of Bosnia–Herzegovina’s communal factions raised the charge of genocide against their rivals.31 Croatian commentators accused Serb forces of perpetrating genocide during their 1991 campaigns in Croatia.32 During the Bosnian conflict the Muslim community was repeatedly described as the victim of genocide.33 In the winter of 1998–99, when the victims of the fighting in progress in Kosovo numbered in the thousands, the charge was leveled against the Serbian authorities once again. As a result of the mass expulsion (but not necessarily systematic mass killing) of Kosovo Albanians during the war, it has found its way into the indictment against Miloˇsevi´c drawn up by the ICTY.34 The UN’s 1948 Genocide Convention, with its assertion that genocide constitutes “a crime under international law which [the signatories] undertake to prevent and to punish,” is a pillar of modern humanitarian law.35 Article 4(2) of the 1993 Statue of the ICTY makes genocide a part of the organization’s mandate by repeating the text of the 1948 Genocide Convention verbatim. But the broad and imprecise language used to define genocide in the text, the fact that the Genocide Convention does not unambiguously authorize a resort to force as a response, the difficulty of demonstrating genocidal intent even in cases of massacre, and the
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inevitable ambiguities of interpretation in real-life situations (effectively demonstrated by the ongoing controversy between Armenians and Turks concerning the purported Ottoman genocide of 1915) make the accusation an extremely difficult and volatile one.36 Unavoidably tied to the unprecedented crimes of the World War II holocaust, the term genocide in fact tends to provide a “high yield source of hatred,” and has therefore become liable to abuse as an “indecent tool of propaganda.”37 Determining when humanitarian abuses become liable to sanction will often demand an essentially subjective judgment based upon imperfect or inadequate knowledge. In an age of instantaneous information, where public perception is often decisively conditioned by sensational media images and reporting, the risk that excessive emotionalism built upon compelling language may misconstrue events, and therefore create an irresistible momentum to “do something” before chains of causality are clear, is very real. Armed conflicts do not always produce unambiguous distinctions between victims and victimizers. Systematic monitoring by impartial observers and lucid adjudication of evidence are the only means to move beyond uncertainty. At present, international instances are far from having the means, or the requisite moral authority, to accomplish such tasks reliably. A doctrine of humanitarian intervention must also come to terms with the issue of commitment. Nations have traditionally crafted international policy on the basis of a discourse of interest. Though humanitarian concerns are not entirely foreign to this discourse, they are seldom at its essence. When interests are not deemed to be vital, a commitment of lives and treasure can seldom be sustained. During the war of Yugoslav succession, the uncertain commitment of the Western powers was repeatedly demonstrated. The West pursued a containment policy for three long years while over 200,000 Yugoslavs were cut down in wars and massacres. In Kosovo, NATO was willing to go to war on behalf of the Kosovo Albanians, but not to risk mass casualties.38 The Bush administration came to office in January 2001 to a chorus of calls from influential supporters urging US military disengagement on the grounds that vital national interests were not at stake. The Balkan case makes clear that humanitarian motivation by itself will seldom provide the kind of sustained commitment that effective intervention demands. Humanitarian War The case for humanitarian intervention presumes that organized violence can be mobilized as an instrument of justice in complex
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regional contingencies within the confines of the test of proportionality. The very character of modern war calls this presumption into doubt. Wesley Clark’s account of Operation Allied Force is imbued with the conviction of fighting in a just cause, but his analysis leaves no doubt that in order to prevail in armed conflict belligerents must respect the laws of warfare and pursue victory uncompromisingly. In limited wars intended to provide “regional stability and humanitarian assistance,” where there is arguably a substitute for victory, the result will often have more in common with imperial policing actions than classic armed conflict between peer competitors.39 The difficulty of mobilizing and sustaining public support pushes inexorably toward a reliance upon airpower in order to reduce or eliminate casualties among one’s own forces, while maximizing the pain inflicted upon the enemy. In Kosovo, according to Michael Ignatieff, “the political leaders of NATO talked the language of ultimate commitment and practiced the warfare of minimum risk.”40 Reluctance to contemplate a ground incursion even in the face of massive humanitarian abuses, reliance upon medium altitude bombing with its unavoidable complement of collateral damage, attempts to assassinate the opposing leadership from the air, and attacks upon “dual use” infrastructure intended at least in part, in the spirit of Giulio Douhet’s call for terror bombing, to break the enemy’s will, were a consequence of that choice.41 The structure of modern war, as defined by Clark, strains at the limits of the test of proportionality.42 Moreover, according to Ignatieff, a zero casualties imperative imposed upon commanders by civilian authority “transforms the expectations that govern the morality of war.”43 The honor of the combatant—the ethical context that distinguishes warfare from crime—has always rested upon the assumption of reciprocal risk in service of a cause. If that contract is broken, Ignatieff insists, war becomes little more than a kind of bullying or chastisement.44 The capacity to wage war with minimum risk makes the decision to resort to force easier to make. If not carefully monitored, such capacity may lead to precipitous and unconsidered actions, discourage the pursuit of diplomatic alternatives, and undermine the just war criterion of last resort. On the eve of Croatia’s Operation Storm in the summer of 1995, confident of US support, Franjo Tudjman used international negotiations as a pretext to buy time for last minute preparations. The Rambouillet negotiations have been portrayed as little more than a ploy intended to justify a resort to force.45 Such circumstances will recur should the presumption of a right to humanitarian intervention become imbedded in the operational code of the great powers. War without the
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risk of consequences likewise makes the temptation to use humanitarian pretexts harder to resist. The obvious danger is the transformation of an agenda based upon an assertion of universal human rights into a disguised form of hegemonism—Hedley Bull, for example, has noted the continuity between the theme of humanitarian intervention and the missionary and colonial traditions.46 “The concept of humanitarian war,” writes Danilo Zolo, “restores to states an indiscriminate ius ad bellum, voids the ‘pacifistic’ functions of international law, and discredits the cosmopolitan ideal of the universal citizen.”47 If these critiques are credited, the more widespread acknowledgment of a thesis of humanitarian war can be interpreted as a step backward for the international war convention. The Limits of Law The ICTY, created in May 1993 by the UNSC on the basis of Chapter I of the UN Charter, with a mandate retrospective to 1991, is the most ambitious dimension of efforts to use the Yugoslav wars as a context for expanding the oversight of the international community in regard to war and armed conflict. The wars in Bosnia–Herzegovina and Kosovo were the first conflicts in history fought in the presence of an international tribunal considered competent to judge crimes committed and to impose penalties upon those determined to be responsible. The effort to move judicial means toward the center of the war convention is a twentieth-century innovation. In the early modern centuries, the European traditions of pacifism and international law (Erasmus, Hugo Grotius, Emeric Crucé, the Duc de Sully, the Abbé Saint-Pierre, William Penn, Emmerich Vattel, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant) emphasized interstate relations and political organization as the foundations of lasting peace.48 Following World War I, the Versailles peacemakers’ attempt to put the Kaiser, together with other German leaders (the surrender of 90 individuals was requested) on trial before an international tribunal with judges representing the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Italy, and Japan, was unprecedented. But Holland refused the Kaiser’s extradition, Germany declined to surrender anyone, and in the end little came of the project. A more significant precedent was established at the end of World War II. The London Accord of 6 August 1945 created the Nuremberg Tribunal on behalf of the victorious nations of the war, and one year later an International Military Tribunal for the Far East was called into being in Tokyo. The Tokyo tribunal conducted two years of hearings before
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11 judges designated by US General Douglas MacArthur. All 28 of the accused who were placed before the court were convicted, and seven executed. The Nuremberg process began on 25 November 1945, with 22 accused placed before US, British, French, and Soviet judges. One year later it concluded with three not guilty verdicts, condemnations to prison terms of varied lengths, and ten death sentences, which were carried out immediately. Though it is often described as a continuation of the Nuremberg tradition, the ICTY rests upon a different set of premises. The Nuremberg Tribunal’s charter specifically cited the “sovereign legislative power of the countries to which the German Reich unconditionally surrendered” as the basis for its authority. The ICTY is not a military tribunal, and Article 16 of its statute calls for action completely independent of any government. 49 A priority for the authorities at Nuremberg, noted in the opening address of Justice Robert H. Jackson citing “the privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world,” though they also took account of war crimes ( jus in bello) and crimes against humanity, was legal responsibility for instigating war (crimes against peace in the tradition of jus ad bellum).50 The Hague Tribunal has focused almost exclusively upon crimes against humanity, and represents a conscious assault against state sovereignty on behalf of universal norms—though it should be noted that unlike the ICTY, the ICC includes the Nuremberg criterion of crimes against peace in its statute. At Nuremberg the German state archives were opened to the defense, and some acquittals were based upon evidence thus obtained. No comparable sources have been placed at the disposal of attorneys for the defense before the ICTY. At Tokyo, verdicts were accompanied by a dissenting opinion (the Indian judge), statements of partial disaccord (the Dutch and French judges), and a separate opinion (the Philippine judge). Nothing similar has occurred at The Hague, under the aegis of what Rubin calls “a hypothesized but non-existent international criminal law.”51 Nuremberg and Tokyo did not establish ongoing traditions—after the processes were concluded the idea of an international criminal tribunal lay dormant until the 1990s. The ICTY’s legitimacy has been challenged on legal grounds, notably by Slobodan Miloˇsevi´c in the deposition at the outset of his trial.52 Does the Security Council have the authority to appoint a court under Chapter VII of the Charter, and to remove juridical authority from sovereign states? These decisions, after lengthy review, were made by the ICTY itself, on its own behalf and in its own favor, in the Miroslav Tadi´c case.53 The judgment may be contested, but it is substantial.
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The issue of the Tribunal’s autonomy is perhaps more troubling. The absence of any multilateral accord as a basis for the Tribunal (as opposed to the ICC) makes it a sort of subsidiary of the Security Council, which cannot be considered either impartial or universal. The same may be said of the procurator general, who is directly appointed by the Security Council. Although Article 29 of the Tribunal’s Statute obligates all state members of the UN to collaborate with its work, the real circle of collaborators has been quite narrow. Article 32 of the Statute specifies that revenues must derive from the UN’s general operating funds, but already in 1993 a special fund for the ICTY was established on the basis of voluntary contributions. The Tribunal is in practice financially dependent upon a small number of Western powers led by the United States. The Tribunal’s procedures have also exposed it to the charges of bias and selective prosecution. Justice has been neither swift, sure, nor equitable. Coercive detainment of indicted defendants was not initiated until the summer of 1997, and has proceeded irregularly and with numerous glitches. On 10 July 1997, British commandos in Prijedor approached Simo Drljaˇca, a local police chief whose area of responsibility during 1992 included the Omarska, Keraterm, and Trnopolje prison camps, in mock Red Cross vehicles, a blatant violation of Red Cross neutrality. Drljaˇca was killed in the resultant shoot out. On 25 August 1999 Momir Tali´c, former commander in chief of the armed forces of the RS, was arrested on the basis of a secret warrant after he was baited to travel to Vienna as an invited guest of the OSCE. Irregular procedures such as these, inconsistency in enforcement of warrants, inability to bring in most wanted suspects including Radovan Karadˇzi´c and Ratko Mladi´c, and difficulties of prosecution lacking representative corroborative testimony, have cast considerable discredit upon the ICTY. In the ten years that it has been in existence, at a cost of over $400 million, 67 defendants have appeared before the court, more than 30 of whom have been tried. Eleven defendants are currently on trial, and approximately 30 indictees are still at large. The majority of indictees have been Serbs. A smaller number of Croats and Bosnian Muslims appear on the list, and only in 2003 were four Albanian members of the KLA, and the Bosnian Muslim Nasim Ori´c, accused of organizing attacks against Serb villages from within the Srebrenica enclave, brought under indictment. At its present pace, the work of the Tribunal is likely to stretch over the better part of the next decade, at escalating cost, and with only the tip of the iceberg of abuses subjected to scrutiny. This is too slow, partial, and contested a result to represent
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a standard of justice, contribute meaningfully to reconciliation, or provide effective admonition to other world leaders contemplating aggression.54 There are clearly a large number of guilty parties in the dock at The Hague who merit exemplary punishment. The premise of legal accountability in regard to the law of war is in principle admirable—if such accountability could be enforced reliably and fairly the international war convention would make a significant step forward. This will perhaps be the challenge confronting the ICC. The experience of the ICTY calls attention to how difficult the challenge is likely to be. Conclusion In his classic On War, the Prussian military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz makes a distinction between the harsh logic of war pursued in its own terms, and the political and social context that constrains its tendency toward unbridled violence. War is an act of force, and “such a dangerous business that the mistakes which come from kindness are the very worst.”55 To speak of humanitarian war, in this realistic frame of reference, is a contradiction in terms. But real war is not unconstrained—wars are usually fought for limited aims, and the institution of war has become more subject to control as social mores have evolved. “If wars between civilized nations are far less cruel and destructive than wars between savages, the reason lies in the social conditions of the states themselves and in their relationships to one another. These are the forces that give rise to war; the same forces circumscribe and moderate it.”56 Have international reactions to the Balkan wars of the 1990s, reflective of a maturing international society with evolving legal and normative structures, created a more rigorous international war convention, more capable of “circumscribing and moderating” the conduct of warfare? Distinguished authors such as the jurist Antonio Cassese have argued that even if the Western intervention in Kosovo was technically contrary to the letter of the UN Charter, the experience provides a positive precedent for “forcible humanitarian countermeasures” upon which the international community can aspire to build. 57 Cassese’s argument is hopeful, but also potentially flawed. First, it rests upon an interpretation of the Balkan conflict of the 1990s that does not necessarily reproduce the dynamics of that conflict accurately. At a minimum, the assignment of primary responsibility to the Serbian faction must be conditioned by a careful analysis of the complex circumstances that led up to the collapse of multinational Yugoslavia, and the involvement of other
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armed factions in war crimes and acts of military aggression. The difficulty of determining responsibility amidst the fog of war should impose caution upon proponents of an aggressive international morality. Second, the international community, even in those cases where consensus is achievable, is not sufficiently institutionalized to support and sustain protracted humanitarian interventions. Without a strong institutional foundation as a basis for international humanitarian law, the abuse of humanitarian motivation as a fig leaf for imperial policies risks discrediting the entire enterprise. Third, except in cases of extraordinary violations, the dynamic of modern war itself makes it difficult if not impossible for decisive interventions to be conducted within the limits of a test of proportionality. Fourth, humanitarian motivation has rarely been accompanied by the kind of commitment required to see external interventions through to a successful conclusion. The conditions in former Yugoslavia today, where de facto international protectorates in Bosnia–Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Macedonia stand guard over dysfunctional polities that have scarcely begun the hard work of post conflict peace building, bears witness to that fact. Humanitarian motives must not only be directed at egregious violations of human rights, usually only the tip of an iceberg of social and economic injustice, but also address underlying sources of disaffection. Finally, the attempt to use juridical means to impose standards of conduct has suffered as a result of the flawed standards, questionable legal means, and inadequate enforcement procedures of The Hague tribunal. The ICC represents an attempt to address some of these inadequacies, but its work has been hampered from the start by great power opposition. What Yugoslavia’s destructive war of secession, and the frustrated engagement of the international community as would be conflict manager and peace builder, have made crystal clear, is how far the social conditions of states and interstate relations still are from providing an adequate framework for a truly exiguous international war convention. In a world of competing sovereignties where force is still a decisive tool of statecraft, the space provided for an “imposed” humanitarianism remains even more vanishingly thin than that allowed for the diplomacy of conflict resolution. The attempt to create such a framework can only progress along the high road of “doctrine” promulgated from above (at present more likely to be honored in the breach than in the observance) if it is preceded by the difficult spadework of purposeful effort to promote greater social equity and international comity from the ground up.
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Notes ˇ c, The Aggression in Bosnia and Genocide Against the Bosnians, 1. Smail Ceki´ 1991–1993, Sarajevo: Ljiljan, 1994; and Hans Trotter et al., “Ethnische Sauberungen” in der nordostbosnischen Stadt Zvornik von April bis Juni 1992, Vienna: Ludwig Baltzman Institute for Human Rights, 1994. 2. Robert Stewart, Broken Lives: A Personal View of the Bosnian Conflict, London: HarperCollins, 1994, pp. 278–99. In a military history of the Yugoslav wars prepared by the US Central Intelligence Agency, the incident is described as “the Guernica of the Bosnian conflict.” Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Russian and European Analysis, Balkan Battlegrounds: A Military History of the Yugoslav Conflict, 1900–1995, 2 vols., Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, May 2002, Vol. 1, p. 130. 3. Jan Honig and Norbert Both, Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime, New York: Penguin Books, 1997; and David Rohde, Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe’s Worst Massacre Since World War II, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997. The Dutch battalion assigned peacekeeping responsibilities in Srebrenica under UN auspices has been subject to particular criticism for its failure to intervene, but, left to their own devices, the Dutch did not have sufficient force structure to impose their will. See the carefully study prepared by the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, Srebrenica, A “Safe” Area: Reconstruction, Background, Consequences and Analyses of the Fall of a Safe Area, Amsterdam: Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, April 2002. 4. “Viˇse od lomaˇce,” Vreme, 23 November 1992, pp. 50–1. 5. The fate of Mostar’s Old Bridge has become an appropriate symbol for this aspect of the conflict. See Miˇso Mari´c, “Pogubljeni most,” Vreme, 3 January 1994, pp. 28–9. 6. Text available at www.icomos.org/hague/hague.convention.html. 7. Mark Mazower, The Balkans: A Short History, New York: Modern Library, 2000, p. xxxviii. 8. The war convention is defined here as the wide variety of ways, ranging from the formalities of international law through the evolving norms and conventions of international behavior, in which the international community attempts to constrain the inherent violence of the institution of war. 9. Robert L. Phillips and Duane L. Cady, Humanitarian Intervention: Just War vs. Pacifism, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1996. 10. For the concept of humanitarian war, Adam Roberts, “Humanitarian War: Military Intervention and Human Rights,” International Affairs, Vol. 69, No. 3, July 1993, pp. 429–49. 11. For the argument in classic form see Hans Kelsen, Peace through Law, 2nd ed., New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1973. Paul R. Williams and Michael P. Scharf, Peace With Justice: War Crimes and Accountability in the Former Yugoslavia, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002 applies the argument to the Yugoslav case.
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12. The Dayton Peace Agreement, Annex 6, Article XIV, 4. 13. Gary Bass, “Milosevic in The Hague,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 82, No. 3, May/June 2003, pp. 82–96. 14. Afsané Bassir Pour, “La Cour pénale internationale deviendra une réalité le 11 avril,” Le Monde, 4 April 2002, and William A. Schabas, An Introduction to the International Criminal Court, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 15. Geoffrey Best, Law and War Since 1945, Oxford: Clarendon, 1994 develops the distinction at length. 16. Alfred P. Rubin, “Dayton, Bosnia, and the Limits of Law,” National Interest, Winter 1996–97, p. 41. 17. The National Security Strategy of the United States, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, September 2002, pp. 15–6. 18. See the contribution in this volume by Christopher C. Joyner and Anthony Clark Arend, “Rethinking the Legal Nuances of Kosovo: Toward an Emerging Norm of Anticipatory Humanitarian Intervention.” 19. The National Security Strategy of the United States, p. 15. 20. Anthony Clark Arend, “International Law and the Preemptive Use of Military Force,” Washington Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 2, Spring 2003, pp. 89–104. 21. Bruno Simma, “Die NATO, die UN und militärische Gewaltanwendung: Rechtliche Aspekte,” in Reinhard Merkel, ed., Der Kosovo-Krieg und das Völkerrecht, Frankfurt am Main: Edition Suhrkamp, 2000, p. 19. 22. Hilaire McCoubrey, “Kosovo, NATO and International Law,” International Relations, Vol. 14, No. 5, August 1999, p. 33. 23. Cited in Simma, “Die NATO, die UN und militärische Gewaltanwendung,” p. 20. 24. See Stanley Henig, “Britain: To War for a Just Cause,” in Anthony Weymouth and Stanley Henig, eds., The Kosovo Crisis: The Last American War in Europe?, London: Reuters, 2001, pp. 39–58. Blair’s remarks appear on page 55. 25. Tony Blair, “Speech to the Economic Club of Chicago,” 22 April 1999. 26. Jürgen Habermas, “Bestialität und Humanität: Ein Krieg an der Grenze zwischen Recht und Moral,” Die Zeit, 29 April 1999, p. 4. 27. Robert Tomes, “Operation Allied Force and the Legal Basis for Humanitarian Intervention,” Parameters, Vol. XXX, No. 1, Spring 2000, pp. 38–50, attempts to make the case for the legality of intervention using a jus cogens argument. 28. Hilaire McCoubrey, “Kosovo, NATO and International Law,” International Relations, Vol. XIV, No. 5, August 1999, pp. 29–46. 29. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peace-Keeping, New York: United Nations, 1992. 30. The term genocide appears in the 1986 Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences, Nacrt memoranduma Srpske Akademije Nauke u Beogradu, Toronto: Srpske Narodne Odbrane, 1987, p. 12.
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31. These factions (the HDZ, SDS, and SDA) were of course formally engaged in a coalition government prior to Bosnia’s descent into war—a government ironically described in the critical Yugoslav press as the “coalition of genocide.” “Koalicija genocida,” Borba, 27 May 1991. 32. Dragan Ogurli´c, Svejdoˇcanstva hrvatskog domovinskog rata ’91/92: Dnevnik reportera, Rijeka: Tiskara Rijeka, 1992, p. 167. 33. The relevance of the term in the Bosnian case is carefully analyzed in Steven L. Burg and Paul S. Shoup, The War in Bosnia–Herzegovina: Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1999, pp. 181–5. 34. Miloˇs evi´c indictment cited from www.guardian.co.yu/article/o,2763, 514441,00.html. 35. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 1. 36. See Jeffrey S. Morton and Neil Vijay Singh, “The International Legal Regime on Genocide,” Journal of Genocide Research, Vol. 5, No. 1, March 2003, pp. 47–70: the comments by Henry Huttenbach, “The Genocide Factor in the Wars of Yugoslav Dismemberment: An Essay,” in this volume; and the case studies in Stjepan G. Meˇstrovi´c, ed., Genocide After Emotion: The Postemotional Balkan War, London: Routledge, 1996. 37. Cédrick Allmang, Les masques de guerre, Paris: Stock, 1999, p. 47. 38. Tobias K. Vogel, “ ‘Preponderant Power’: NATO and the New Balkans,” International Journal, Vol. 55, No. 1, Winter 1999–2000, pp. 15–34. 39. Wesley K. Clark, Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat, New York: Public Affairs, 2001, p. 419. 40. Michael Ignatieff, Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000, p. 111. 41. Nat Hentoff, “Morality at 15,000 Feet,” Washington Post, 19 June 1999, p. A19. For Douhet’s classic defense of the strategic logic of terror bombing, Giulio Douhet, The Command of the Air, Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1983, pp. 55–61. 42. See the argument in Raju G. C. Thomas, “NATO, the UN, and International Law,” Mediterranean Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 3, Summer 1999, pp. 25–50. 43. Ignatieff, Virtual War, p. 161. 44. On this “force protection” issues see also Martin L. Cook, “Immaculate War: Constraints on Humanitarian Intervention,” Ethics and International Affairs, Vol. 14, 2000, pp. 55–65. 45. The most detailed Western account of US decision-making during the crisis argues baldly that the purpose of Rambouillet was not to promote a diplomatic accord, but rather “to create a consensus in Washington and among the NATO allies that force would have to be used.” Ivo L. Daalder and Michael E. O’Hanlon, Winning Ugly: NATO’s War to Save Kosovo, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2000, p. 85. 46. Hedley Bull, “Human Rights and World Politics,” in Ralph Pettmen, ed., Moral Claims in World Affairs, London: Croom Helms, 1978, p. 81.
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47. Danilo Zolo, Chi dice umanità: Guerra, diritto e ordine globale, Turin: Einaudi, 2000, p. 106. 48. Geoffrey Best, Humanity in Warfare: The Modern History of the International Law of Armed Conflict, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980, p. 44 speaks of an “enlightenment consensus” in this regard. 49. Article 16.2 of the ITFY Statue reads: “The Prosecutor shall act independently as a separate organ of the International Tribunal. He or she shall not seek or receive instructions from any Government or any other source.” 50. Cited from John Laughland, “This is not Justice,” Guardian, 16 February 2002. 51. Rubin, “Dayton, Bosnia, and the Limits of Law,” p. 46. 52. “Excerpts from Milosevic’s Address to the Hague Tribunal,” Guardian, 14 February 2002. 53. Jolyon Naegele, “The Hague: Court’s Legitimacy and Longevity Remains Uncertain,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), 15 February 2002. 54. Jenny S. Martinez, “Troubles at the Tribunal,” Washington Post, 3 July 2001, p. A19. 55. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984, p. 75. 56. Ibid., p. 76. 57. Antonio Cassese, “Ex iniuria ius oritur: Are We Moving Toward International Legitimization of Forcible Humanitarian Countermeasures in the World Community?” European Journal of International Law, Vol. 10, No. 1, 1999, pp. 23–30.
CHAPTER 9
Rethinking the Legal Nuances of Kosovo: Toward an Emerging Norm of Anticipatory Humanitarian Intervention? Christopher C. Joyner and Anthony Clark Arend
Introduction
U
nder the UN Charter framework for recourse to force, states are proscribed from using force against the “territorial integrity” or “political independence” of states. Force is only explicitly permitted when it is undertaken for self-defense or pursuant to Security Council authorization. Within the state, the right of the government to regulate the lives of its citizens is viewed by international law under most circumstances as a legitimate exercise of national sovereignty, whereas in international relations, transnational intervention is seen as a violation of sovereignty. Thus under the Charter paradigm, nonintervention is considered to be a principle of international law fostering friendly relations among states. The NATO action in Kosovo falls beyond the bounds of the lawful use of force under the scope of the UN Charter, and can therefore be considered illegal under this Charter framework. But as this chapter contends, that action by NATO may be viewed as evidence of an emerging legal norm that permits states to use military coercion to impede a government from committing large-scale atrocities in its own territory in circumstances where the Security Council is incapable of responding to the crisis. Under these special conditions, a customary practice
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appears to be emerging that legitimates the use of force by states, even in the absence of prior authorization by the Security Council. The premise for this emerging norm rests in human rights law. In recent decades, increasing concern has arisen over massive human rights abuses within states. Following World War II, the preeminent aim of the UN was to outlaw the use of force by states against each other. The world had been devastated by two global conflicts, and the framers of the Charter earnestly wanted to prevent another. The great import attached to the principle of nonintervention flows from this aspiration. While the goal of preventing war is admirable, such a blanket prohibition on the use of force makes it impossible to respond forcibly in cases not permitted under the Charter, even in the face of what appears to be an overwhelming “just cause.” But in the aftermath of the Cold War and the rise of ethno-nationalism in the 1990s, world war appears to be fading from concern. At the same time, massive human rights depredations in internal conflicts, without sufficient efforts by the government to protect innocent victims, are becoming notably prevalent. These developments point to critical questions involving the external use of force to protect the human rights of people in other states. Should the right of individual and collective humanitarian intervention be deemed permissible? If so, when? Must intervention lawfully occur only after largescale, egregious violations of human rights have taken place? Or, can some concerned state or group of states exercise armed humanitarianism in a preemptive fashion? That is, can some state or group of states use armed force against another state if gross, violent, massive human rights violations are unmistakably imminent? In the aftermath of Kosovo, considerable thought suggests that individuals, as well as states, should properly be considered subjects of international law. Use of military intervention to assist persons whose human rights are about to be egregiously violated by their government may be perfectly legitimate, on condition that the cause is real and just. This conclusion stems from changing political developments in the international system that appear to be causing profound changes in the substance and reach of international law. But then, even if humanitarian intervention were accepted as a lawful means to protect the human rights of innocent civilians, must a potential intervener wait until massive suffering has occurred before taking action to halt the atrocities? Given recent events, international legal trends suggest this might not be the case. This study builds on that premise, and calls for a reformulation of the normative foundations on which the principle of nonintervention rests. Toward that end, the article presents the case for a novel legal approach— resort to a strategy of anticipatory humanitarian intervention.1
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The Charter Framework The Intent of the Charter’s Framers The UN Charter framework proclaims three principal goals: the preservation of the peace, the protection of human rights, and the promotion of self-determination. The Charter system, however, creates a tension between these goals, with peace upheld as predominant among them. “Justice”—the pursuit of human rights, self-determination, and other goals such as economic development and the correction of past wrongs—was to be sought, but not at the expense of “peace.” Given the experience of two devastating world wars, the framers of the Charter believed that force was too dangerous to be seen as a legitimate means of altering the political or territorial status quo. Under the Charter, other mechanisms were established to allow states the means to seek justice peacefully. The cornerstone of this Charter framework for the recourse to force is Article 2, paragraph 4. This Article provides: All Members [of the United Nations] shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
Article 2(4) constitutes a basic proscription on the use—and even the threat—of force that in some manner violates the territorial integrity or political independence of states or that in some other way transgresses the purposes of the United Nations. In the Charter, there are only two explicit exceptions to this prohibition that are still applicable: force undertaken in self-defense and force authorized by the Security Council. First, under Article 51 of the Charter, states maintain “an inherent right of individual” and “collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs” “until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.” Hence, if one state commits an armed attack against another state, the aggrieved state may use force to repel the attack until such time as the Security Council acts. Moreover, the victim state can call upon other states to assist it in collectively defending itself. Second, under Article 39, the Security Council is empowered to determine if there is a “threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression . . . .” If the Council so determines, it is permitted under Article 42 to authorize the use of military force against the recalcitrant state.2 Under Chapter VIII of the Charter, regional organizations are allowed to deal with a “matter relating to international peace and
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security,”3 but those organizations cannot undertake an “enforcement action” without the authorization of the Security Council.4 Under UN Charter law, for armed force to be permissible to address a humanitarian crisis, the Security Council must determine that massive violations of human rights have occurred—or are about to occur—in some state, conclude that such an event actually constitutes a threat to international peace, and then authorize an enforcement action to prevent those violations. In the absence of such authorization, resort to military means for compelling some government not to perpetrate, or even not to tolerate, the commission of human rights atrocities within its territory would constitute a breach of Article 2(4) of the Charter, and thus be considered unlawful. Moreover, so long as that humanitarian crisis did not transcend national borders and precipitate armed attacks against other states, recourse to Article 51 is not available. Human rights law aims to promote and protect the dignity and worth of the human person. The UN Charter in fact makes promotion of human rights a foundational purpose of the UN and asserts so in the Charter’s preamble. Articles 55 and 56 of the Charter obligate each UN member to “take joint and separate action” to ensure the “universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms.” Thus, a conflict arises between the dual objectives of the UN Charter when a regime deprives its citizens of fundamental human rights. Critical questions are thus starkly raised for states persons and diplomats: Do these acts, even if they are the most heinous crimes imaginable, remain within the sovereign prerogatives and jurisdiction of that state? Do they pose any actual military threat to world peace? If not, is the United Nations still empowered to act, and if the Security Council opts for whatever reason not to do so, must thousands or even millions of peoples die from violence, starvation, and disease for the sake of sovereignty? International law commentators remain divided on these issues. Challenges to the Charter Framework Since the Charter entered into force in 1945, commentators have called into question the efficacy of this framework. In connection with an examination of the use of force for purposes of humanity, two challenges seem particularly relevant. First, questions may be raised about the proper interpretation of the Charter. One could begin with Article 2(4). What does it mean to use force against the “territorial integrity” or
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“political independence” of a state? Is it possible to use force in the territory of a state in such a manner that it is not against the territorial integrity or political independence of that state? Many credible writers have argued, for example, that the use of force by one state in the territory of another state purely to rescue nationals of the first state, does not constitute a violation of Article 2(4).5 Perhaps the use of force for humanitarian purposes also would not rise above the Article 2(4) threshold. Similarly, the same types of interpretive questions could be raised about Article 51. What is an “armed attack”? Does the reference in Article 51 to a right of self-defense “if an armed attack occurs” mean that a soon-to-be-attacked state must wait until the troops move into its territory or the bombs actually begin to fall, before it can act individually or collectively to defend itself? As noted below, under customary international law developed before the Charter was adopted, states had a right of “anticipatory” or “preemptive” self-defense, if an attack were imminent. Does Article 51 deny to states that right? Questions have also been raised about the right of regional organizations to use force.6 What does the Article 53 prohibition on “enforcement actions” mean? Are there times when a regional organization can use force other than in collective self-defense or when authorized by the Security Council? Second, as the international system moved away from World War II, states have evinced a growing preference for “justice” over “peace.” They have claimed a right to use force to pursue just goals in circumstances other than those permitted under the Charter. During the Cold War, the Johnson, Brezhnev, and Reagan doctrines reflected this value shift. The Soviets argued that it was “just” to use force to prevent a socialist state from reverting to capitalism, and the United States asserted that it was permissible to support “freedom fighters” in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, and a variety of other places. More recently, “justice” was advanced by the Clinton administration as a main reason for NATO intervention in the Kosovo crisis.7 In light of these and a variety of other challenges, many commentators question whether a strict legalist interpretation of the Charter still accurately describes the current state of international law dealing with the use of force. Some even subscribe to the radical position that Article 2(4) no longer reflects the contemporary international law dealing with the recourse to force.8 While perhaps true, one does not need to reach that conclusion to appreciate one potential exception to the Article 2(4) prohibition on the use of force that may be emerging—namely, the use of military force to intervene preemptively in anticipation of massive human rights atrocities.
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The Doctrine of Anticipatory Humanitarian Intervention The Nature of Anticipatory Humanitarian Intervention In assessing the nature and lawfulness of anticipatory humanitarian intervention, it is essential to understand the meaning of the concept. Each element of the notion must be explained in order to appreciate the concept’s implications for international law. In this respect, the notion of “anticipatory” refers to the ability to foresee the consequences of some action and take measures aimed at checking or countering those consequences. An anticipatory act is one that deals with likely outcomes in advance—one that acts in order to forestall some later action. An anticipatory act is able to visualize the future conditions, foresee their consequences, and take remedial measures before the consequences occur. In effect, anticipatory action serves the purpose of preempting foreseeable outcomes, presumably those that are likely to be negative. The notion of “humanitarian” reflects concern for human welfare. Four core principles encompass the concept of humanitarian. For one, there is the principle of “humanity” itself—a concern for the interests and well-being of human beings, in particularly those who are suffering, threatened, or in harm’s way. Humanitarianism involves action on behalf of the victims, in essence to defend the common humanity. A second principle is that of impartiality. No discrimination should be made on grounds of race, ethnicity, religious belief, social class, gender, sexual orientation, political opinion, or national origin. Humanitarianism aims to relieve the suffering of any and all people. Accordingly, a humanitarian action is dictated only by necessity. All people are of equal worth and concern because they are human beings, not because of other distinctions. A third principle underlying humanitarianism is neutrality. The rationale for engaging in humanitarian efforts must not be narrowly political or ideological. An act motivated by humanitarian concern must not take sides; it must serve the interests of the victims of conflict, not the narrow interests of any belligerent faction. Finally, there is the principle of universality. Humanitarianism reflects equal values for all peoples. It does not discriminate based on the political or strategic importance of the state in question. An act of “intervention” may be defined as the coercive interference by one state into the affairs of another state. Intervention connotes the use or threat of force by a government to compel or prevent some action, or to change conditions, in some other state. When brought together, “anticipatory humanitarian intervention” means the coercive interference by one state or group of states into the affairs of another state for
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the express purpose of preempting or mitigating human rights atrocities that are about to be committed in the latter state. Finally, it should be noted that from a legal perspective it is important to distinguish any uses of force authorized by the Security Council from those that have not been so authorized. When the Security Council authorizes a use of force under Chapter VII of the Charter—even if for a so-called humanitarian reason—there is no real question about the lawfulness of that action. It is not generally disputed that the Security Council can deem an act to be a threat to the peace, a breach of the peace, or an act of aggression and legitimately authorize a forcible response. The debate about lawfulness arises when such interventions are undertaken without the approval of the Security Council. As a consequence, the term “anticipatory humanitarian intervention” will be used to refer to actions undertaken for humanitarian purposes that have not been authorized by the Security Council. In light of this definition, the overarching motivations for anticipatory humanitarian intervention remain humanitarian. The need for such intervention is triggered by the scale and intensity of human suffering and by the failure of governmental authorities to fulfill their principal duties under international law. The moral case to intervene becomes overwhelming when a government is revealed to be on the verge of ordering or permitting unspeakable crimes to be committed against its people. It seems reasonable to conclude that humanitarian intervention constitutes “an emergency action intended to save lives,” thereby justifying the use of force. When such a massive threat to human lives is truly imminent, we believe that a state would be morally justified to use force. But whether such action would be legally justified remains unclear. The Legal Status of Anticipatory Action In nearly all the scholarly debates about humanitarian intervention, the term “anticipatory” is normally not linked to the concept. In the classic cases often cited—the Congo, the Dominican Republic, East Pakistan, Angola, Kampuchea, Uganda, and Grenada—an intervention occurred following allegations that massive human rights abuses had already taken place. In the Kosovo intervention, however, the massive violations were only beginning. President William Clinton spoke of acting “to protect thousands of innocent people in Kosovo from a mounting military offensive.”9 While certain atrocities were alleged to have taken place, Clinton explained that one of NATO’s goals was “[t]o deter an
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even bloodier offensive against innocent civilians in Kosovo, and, if necessary, to seriously damage the Serbian military’s capacity to harm the people of Kosovo.”10 As a consequence, to develop arguments supporting the notion of anticipatory humanitarian intervention, it is necessary first to explore the arguments relating to anticipatory action. Under customary international law developed before the Charter was adopted, states had a right to anticipatory self-defense. The classic articulation of this doctrine was the so-called Caroline case. The Caroline was a vessel that was accused of providing assistance to rebels fighting against the regime in Canada. On 29 December 1837, while the Caroline was docked on the American side of the Niagara River, British troops attacked the ship, set it on fire, and ultimately sent it over Niagara Falls. The United States protested the British action and, after the exchange of diplomatic correspondence, eventually the British apologized. Nonetheless, in the course of the controversy, two principles for legitimate anticipatory self-defense were articulated. First was the principle of necessity. Then Secretary of State Daniel Webster told the British that in order to be able to act, a state would need to prove that the “necessity of that self-defense is instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment of deliberation.”11 Second, for a state’s action to be lawful the response must be proportionate to the threat. As Webster noted, in order for the response to be permissible it must not be “unreasonable or excessive.”12 In the period since 1945, considerable debate has arisen over the continuing vitality of the concept of anticipatory self-defense. Some commentators, such as Ian Brownlie,13 Yoram Dinstein,14 and Philip Jessup,15 adhere to a “restrictionist” interpretation of the Charter. They argue that the intent of Article 51 was to limit the recourse to force in self-defense only to circumstances in which an armed attack has actually occurred. Other commentators, “counter-restrictionists,” such as Derek Bowett,16 William V. O’Brien,17 and Myres McDougal,18 contend that even following the adoption of the Charter, states maintain a right to anticipatory self-defense. While neither the Security Council nor the International Court of Justice has authoritatively spoken on the question of anticipatory self-defense, the practice of states and treaty codifications would seem to confirm the existence of this right under contemporary customary international law.19 In three cases in which questions of anticipatory self-defense arose—the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the 1967 Six Days’ War in the Middle East, and the 1981 Israeli bombing of the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq—spirited discussions occurred within the Security Council. In the course of these debates,
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states made a variety of arguments on both sides of the question of the legal permissibility of anticipatory self-defense. What becomes clear after examining these debates is that there was no clear consensus among Council members that Article 51 limited the right to self-defense to circumstances in which an actual armed attack had already occurred. As a consequence, there would seem to be no prohibition on the right to use force preemptively for self-defense, provided that the criteria of necessity and proportionality are met. But how does this right to anticipatory self-defense connect to humanitarian intervention? The study now turns to address this question. The Legal Status of Humanitarian Intervention Over the course of the post–World War II period, much attention has focused on the notion of humanitarian intervention.20 As with the concept of anticipatory self-defense, scholars seem to fall into one of two broad categories: restrictionists and counter-restrictionists. On one hand restrictionists—such as Michael Akehurst,21 Natalino Ronzitti,22 and Ian Brownlie23—argue that Article 2(4) should be interpreted as a general proscription on the use of force against states. As a consequence, in the absence of a clear case of an actual armed attack or the explicit authorization of the Security Council, states cannot lawfully use force—even for humanitarian purposes. On the other hand, counterrestrictionists—such as John Norton Moore,24 W. Michael Reisman,25 and Richard Lillich26—have advanced a series of arguments supporting the lawfulness of humanitarian intervention. Some suggest that humanitarian intervention should be regarded as permissible because it falls below the Article 2(4) threshold. That is, humanitarian intervention is not unlawful because it is not a use of force against the “territorial integrity” or “political independence” of states, nor does it transgress the purposes of the UN. It does not violate the “territorial integrity” of a state, since the purpose of such intervention is not to gain territory or alter an existing border. Nor does it violate the “political independence” of states because it does not seek to subject the recalcitrant state to the political domination of the intervening state. Moreover, humanitarian intervention is not inconsistent with the purposes of the UN. In fact, it is in consonance with the UN Charter goals of promoting human rights and self-determination. Another argument in support of humanitarian intervention suggests that the dual goals of the Charter—the promotion of peace and the promotion of human rights—should not be seen in an inflexible
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hierarchical relationship. At times, the goal of promoting human rights should be able to trump the goal of promoting peace. In other words, at times the need to end human suffering should override the desire to avoid the use of force. But while legal arguments exist on both sides of the issue, the ultimate determinant of customary international law is state practice.27 State Practice in Kosovo Kosovo represents the most recent case concerning the question of humanitarian action. Kosovo is a province of Yugoslavia, not an independent state. Though 90 percent of its population is ethnic Albanian, the international community has not supported a right of succession for Kosovo. Given that Kosovo is a part of Yugoslavia in fact and in law, the military action by NATO raises questions about the lawfulness of external intervention in internal strife. Critics of NATO’s bombing action in Kosovo are quick to point out that NATO unlawfully intervened in a sovereign state’s (i.e., Serbia’s) internal dispute, which of course rests on the UN Charter provisions that prohibit the use of force except in self-defense, when a state is threatened by aggression, or when the Security Council authorizes a military operation for humanitarian or other reasons. While the Security Council did adopt resolutions expressing concern over the situation in Kosovo, it never expressly authorized the use of force by any state or group of states.28 In September 1998 the Security Council adopted Resolution 1199 (1998), which expressed deep concern for the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Kosovo and, on the basis of Chapter VII, determined that the situation there constituted a “threat to peace and security in the region.”29 By invoking Chapter VII, the Security Council implicitly asserted that there had occurred a threat to the peace, or breach of the peace, or an act of aggression of an international character. The Council also called upon states to provide humanitarian assistance in the region. Resolution 1199 thus acknowledged that a situation existed in Kosovo that was covered by Chapter VII and recognized that Yugoslav forces had played a role in creating the crisis. But at no time did the Council give its express authorization for any state or group of states to use forcible intervention. UNSC Resolution 1203 acknowledged the Security Council’s decision to act under Chapter VII and “demanded” that the FRY “comply fully and swiftly with resolutions 1160 (1998) and 1199 (1998) and cooperate fully with the OSCE Verification Mission in Kosovo and the
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NATO Verification Mission over Kosovo. . . .”30 It also “demanded” that immediate action be taken by the authorities of the FRY and the Kosovo Albanian leadership “to cooperate with international efforts to improve the humanitarian situation and to avert the impending humanitarian catastrophe.”31 As noted above, the UN Charter provides a means for legitimating armed intervention by NATO. Regional arrangements, such as NATO, are permitted in Chapter VIII of the Charter. But Chapter VIII, Article 53, prohibits enforcement action (as distinguished from measures taken in self-defense) by regional bodies without the authorization of the UNSC.32 If the bombing action by NATO were undertaken to coerce the Yugoslav government into accepting the Western peace plan for Kosovo, Security Council authorization would be required. If, on the other hand, the NATO action aimed to ensure humanitarian relief for the people of Kosovo, or merely assist them to repel armed aggression, an argument could be marshaled that Security Council permission might not be necessary. In any event, NATO never went to the Security Council to seek permission; nor was permission ever granted by the Security Council to legitimize NATO’s “enforcement action” in Kosovo. Difficulty arises in legitimizing the NATO action as humanitarian intervention to halt genocide as well. In the case of genocide, a state or group of states is explicitly obligated under the 1948 Genocide Convention to oppose acts of genocide. While massive violations of human rights occurred in Kosovo, however, genocidal atrocities did not occur, at least as defined under the Genocide Convention.33 Nor did those violations constitute an armed attack as defined in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, since no military force was used by Serbia against the territorial integrity or political independence of any NATO member. Consequently, any threat or use of force could not be justified as selfdefense against an armed attack. The reaction of the international community to the NATO actions is critical to any assessment of the status of the NATO bombardment of Serbia as humanitarian intervention. Reaction of the nonaligned movement appeared blunted. In a statement about the NATO action issued in early April l999, the movement expressed “deep alarm” at the “worsening crisis” and was “deeply concerned by the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Kosovo,” but there was no condemnation explicitly or implicitly of NATO’s use of military force.34 Appeals were made for NATO to resume diplomatic efforts under the auspices of the UN and the relevant SCRs, but no forthright condemnation of NATO was made. Similarly, in a statement issued in late March by a group of Latin
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American states, “anxiety” was expressed “about the commencement of air strikes by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization against Serbian military targets . . .” and regret was expressed over the “recourse to the use of force in contravention of the provisions of Article 53, paragraph 1, and Article 54 of the Charter of the United Nations,” which assert the requirement that the Security Council authorize enforcement actions. Even so, no declared condemnation of the NATO action was explicitly asserted by these Latin American governments.35 Interestingly enough, Secretary-General Kofi Annan implicitly endorsed the air strikes against Serbia on the grounds that Yugoslav authorities persistently refused to accept a political settlement. Force sometimes is necessary for restoring or preserving peace, and the case of Kosovo bore that out.36 Legal Assessment Given the post–Cold War experiences, it is still not possible to conclude that anticipatory humanitarian intervention is clearly lawful. What can be said, however, is that these recent developments seem to indicate a tendency to accept the practice, without acknowledging the lawfulness of the concept. This contention seems on the mark for three reasons: First, states have demonstrated an increased willingness to recognize a growing body of international human rights law. As noted earlier, these emerging norms impose duties upon states party to those agreements to treat their nationals in accordance with international standards.37 Clearly, human rights norms now occupy a center place of international law. The realization is underscored even in the Preamble of the UN Charter as the people’s determination “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person,” and expressed in the dedication “to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest.”38 There is little doubt that these preambular provisions, in tandem with those specific articles in the Charter that reaffirm the UN commitment to promote universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all peoples, generate a constructive obligation for member states to take action in defense of human rights.39 Under the Charter, but no less important in light of the development of recent international humanitarian legal norms, human rights protections should be accorded the same priority as the maintenance of international peace. In conjunction, in an important decision, the International Court of Justice specifically stated that given the saliency of human rights, “all states can be held to
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have a legal interest in their protection.”40 The Court observed that such obligations derive in contemporary international law “from the outlawing of acts of aggression, and of genocide, as also from the principles and rules concerning the basic rights of the human person, including protection from slavery and racial discrimination.”41 Second, there is an increasing willingness on the part of the UN to recognize that humanitarian crises may in and of themselves be threats to international peace and security. The UN actions in northern Iraq, Bosnia, Somalia, and Rwanda point directly to that conclusion. Third, in the only bonafide example of anticipatory humanitarian intervention, the international community was remarkably silent. Even though there was no authorization from the Security Council for the NATO action, the member states of the UN were extremely muted in their response. Unlike past intervention led by the United States—such as the 1983 invasion of Grenada or the 1989 intervention in Panama— there were no strong unified voices condemning the Kosovo action. Indeed, as noted earlier, even Secretary-General Kofi Annan may have given his tacit support for the actions by NATO. While international public opinion is still very much in flux, these three points suggest that a norm of customary international law may be emerging. Anticipatory humanitarian intervention may not yet be established law—lex lata—but it may be developing law—lege ferenda. If this is the case, the issue becomes how this norm can best be developed. In other words, what criteria would best set the parameters for this norm? Our proposal will be set forth in the next section. Anticipatory Humanitarian Intervention: A Proposal Anticipatory humanitarian intervention is not the legal equivalent of waging war against another state. To the contrary, such use of force may be justified for the protection of fundamental human rights. In a state where the human rights of innocent persons are being egregiously violated, another government or group of governments must weigh pursuing two inherently contradictory obligations: on the one hand, there is the obligation to protect innocent persons under human rights law, and on the other, there is the obligation to avoid the use of force in international relations. If we assume that in certain circumstances the obligation to protect human rights should outweigh the obligation to refrain from using armed force, then in those cases another state or group of states may interfere in the affairs of that state whose government is committing (or at least not attempting to halt) gross human
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rights atrocities. Such a determination of relative values, however, is neither easily arrived at, nor quantitatively verifiable. The concern persists that resort to anticipatory humanitarian intervention might be susceptible to abuse. Under the pretext of preemptive humanitarian intervention, a state could invade another state for its own purposes. As a consequence, the following criteria will assist in determining the legal permissibility of anticipatory humanitarian intervention. Such conditions should include the following: (1) the exhaustion of peaceful means; (2) the inability of the Security Council to act; (3) the proportionate character of the intervention; (4) the humanitarian motivation for intervention; (5) the scale, scope and nature of the human rights violations; (6) a preference for multilateral action; and (7) non-opposition from the international community. Exhaustion of Peaceful Alternatives Prior to using force, an intervening state is legally bound to pursue all reasonable peaceful means available aimed at resolving the situation. These means might include diplomatic protests, appeals to the UNSC, and even economic sanctions. Even so, the time available for resort to these peaceful means remains contingent upon the situation in the target state. If human rights conditions worsen, or the threats to the security of persons in that state escalate, the lawful justification—and need—for anticipatory humanitarian intervention correspondingly will rise. The lawful prerequisite to undertake peaceful means of dispute settlement evaporates with the deterioration of the human rights conditions in the offending state. International law does not say that the search for means to restore domestic peace in a state must go forward while thousands of innocent persons in that state are killed. In such circumstances, the procedural search for conflict resolution must give way to the substantive protection of potential victims through preemptive armed intervention. To do otherwise not only could prompt the perpetrators to begin killing, but might also trigger the slaughter of innocents on a massive scale. In any event, clear and compelling evidence must indicate that gross and egregious violations of human rights involving the deaths of hundreds or even thousands of innocent people are actually going to occur in the territory of a sovereign state.42 The threat of these atrocities, which would amount to crimes against humanity, is made real either with the complicity or support of the governmental authorities, or because those authorities are unable or unwilling to prevent them.
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The Inability of the Security Council to Act In order for action outside the Charter framework to be justified, the Security Council is unwilling or not able to take coercive action to prevent the impending massacres or massive human rights depredations. Such UN inaction might originate from disagreement among permanent members on the Council, or from one of them casting a veto, or simply from that body opting to adopt a resolution condemning the situation and admonishing the state in question to refrain from any massive atrocities, rather than take any effective preventive action aimed at stopping human rights atrocities. Proportionate Character of the Intervention The force used preemptively for human rights protection must be limited to the minimum level necessary to halt impending human rights violations.43 The intervening state must plan and carry out its military action carefully so as not to inflict more harm, deaths, or injury than it seeks to prevent. Generally the authority structure of the offending state should not be overthrown, nor should the domestic political process of that state be permanently altered. However, if the government of an offending state is responsible for planning or committing massive human rights abuses, it does so at the risk of being removed by an intervening humanitarian force, but only if necessary to halt the loss of life. An action undertaken on grounds of anticipatory humanitarian intervention must also be limited in duration, meaning the time that is necessary to stop the atrocities from taking place or to halt their execution. Anticipatory humanitarian intervention cannot be a legal rationale for military occupation of some state, nor is it acceptable as a justification for annexation or integration of territory by another state. The armed force taken is used exclusively for the limited purpose of preventing or halting the atrocities and restoring respect for human rights. Such humanitarian coercion must be stopped as soon as the purpose of the intervention is secured. The use of force, moreover, must be proportionate to the threat that it seeks to put down. The critical point remains that human rights have evolved such that the quality of rights of all people merits protection under international law. International law must be directed at protecting the sovereignty inherent in people, not merely the legal polity known as the state. That is, sovereignty inures in the citizens of the state, not in the government as sovereign, particularly when that government by commission or omission fails to halt brutal depredations of human rights or is actually
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engaged in perpetrating them against its own citizens. The bottom line in our view is this: if force is used consistently with other principles in the UN Charter without being directed against the territorial integrity or political independence of another state, it may well be held as commendable rather than condemnable under the UN Charter. Humanitarian Motivation for the Action The manifest motivation for undertaking anticipatory humanitarian intervention must be the clear and present protection of human rights for endangered persons. While pure humanitarian motives seem unlikely, the predominant reason for intervention must be humanitarian concern, rather than for some political, economic, or ideological gain by the intervening state. This stipulation might seem reasonable enough, but it is difficult to gauge with compelling precision. In any event, anticipatory intervention for humanitarian purposes must be taken so as to ensure respect for the general rule of law and not to pursue the realization of some government’s individual advantage. In effect, states act as trustees and defenders of the law of humanity when that law is violated in some state. They are not to use the law to prosecute their own self-interested ends under the guise of humanitarian concerns. The Scale, Scope, and Nature of Human Rights Violations It is also important that humanitarian action only be taken in response to or in anticipation of large-scale violations of human rights norms. But what should be considered a large-scale atrocity or a massive human rights violation? Such a determination must be a matter of fact, based on the particular circumstances. Obviously, the anticipated murder of a single person in some state can hardly be a reason for another state or states to launch an armed humanitarian intervention. Likewise, the death toll should not have to escalate into the hundreds of thousands to justify external resort to force to halt the atrocities. A government engaged in perpetrating genocidal atrocities or crimes against humanity against its own people makes itself a legitimate target for international humanitarian intervention to suppress those atrocities. A legacy of past large-scale atrocities can furnish a legitimate prerequisite for undertaking anticipatory humanitarian intervention. When the government of a state has a history of killing, torturing, or creating conditions of intolerable suffering for large numbers of its own citizens, then anticipatory humanitarian intervention may be a viable prospect in
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the course of future events. The right to life is a fundamental human right that civilized governments are supposed to protect through due process, not take away en masse through genocidal acts. Action in Concert It seems preferable that anticipatory humanitarian intervention be undertaken, or at least authorized by a regional organization, or a recognized coalition of states acting on behalf of the international community. The least preferable means of anticipatory humanitarian intervention is that done unilaterally by some state. Even so, unilateral intervention taken preemptively to protect innocent persons threatened with massive human rights atrocities must be preferred over no action at all. Multilateral intervention is preferred, not only because greater lawfulness might accrue from more states committed to the same objective of human rights protection, but also because joint action by several states makes it less likely that the intervention is undertaken for ulterior motives aimed at satisfying more parochial national interests. Non-Opposition from the International Community Finally, in order for preemptive humanitarian action to be lawful, the vast majority of the international community needs to either support or, at the very least, not actively oppose the action. If the above criteria are met, and the overwhelming number of states do not oppose the action, such lack of opposition can be seen as enabling—even if not explicitly authorizing—the humanitarian action. Conclusion A conflict arises between objectives in the UN Charter when a government egregiously deprives its citizens of fundamental human rights. That unjust action no longer remains within the domestic jurisdiction of that state. The recent post-Charter period suggests new trends emerging in the development of international law. Principles such as sovereignty, nonintervention, and respect for human rights are undergoing transformation in terms of their relative priority as perceived by governments, and resultant state practice could shift considerations affecting the perceived lawfulness of anticipatory humanitarian intervention. These trends suggest that if a government intends to commit, or allows to be committed, the most heinous crimes imaginable, but refrains from
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engaging in actions that traditionally might be considered a threat to international peace, armed intervention for humanitarian protection may be undertaken by concerned states under certain conditions to stop the perpetration of those crimes against humanity. National sovereignty after Kosovo is becoming more porous to international human rights concerns. All interventions must not be condemned simply because they penetrate sovereign prerogatives of a state. To assert that intervention, in whatever form, for whatever reason it is undertaken should be considered impermissible because it intrudes upon the independence of a state and respect for its sovereignty is to miss the trees for the sake of the forest. It is the government of the state, not the state itself, which is at issue. If a government is culpable of—or is unwilling or unable to protect its people from—gross human rights abuses and large-scale atrocities, the fig leaf of sovereignty no longer permits the massive abuse of those people. At what human price does the shield of sovereignty erode the protection of human rights? From this new perspective, there is a point where the promotion of justice must outweigh the presumption in favor of peace. Anticipatory humanitarian intervention furnishes the normative justification for exercising the departure from peace. Some will still argue that a restrictionist understanding of the Charter is the most beneficial to the international community. Given that the maintenance of peace and security is the primary goal of the UN, they will assert that the only permissible use of force in contemporary international law should be in cases of individual or collective selfdefense under Article 51 and UN enforcement actions in cases of threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression as set out in Chapter VII. Their conclusion will remain that any unilateral exercise of force other than in the exercise of the right of self-defense would be unlawful, irrespective of the justification or the aim pursued. Article 2(4) contains an absolute, unconditional prohibition on the use of force, which renders any goal or intention of a state initiating force unlawful. Any use of force, regardless of motive or purpose, would be a violation of the Charter unless justifiable under one of the explicit exceptions. This chapter respectfully disagrees with this understanding as the premise for conducting contemporary international relations in the new century. Intervention to protect human rights, even before the slaughter begins, should be permissible. The use of forcible self-help to prevent death, serious injury, or massive human rights atrocities to any particular group of people deemed “innocent” by the standards of international morality ought to be considered legitimate under international law.
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Interventions to protect the rights of innocent persons can be legitimated as operations not directed at the territorial integrity or political independence of a target state. As a consequence, these acts of forcible self-help do not impinge on the aforementioned two essential elements of state sovereignty. Norms are not static. They must evolve with the society in which they hold moral sway. When the values and priorities of a society change, so too will change the norms that guide that society. Accordingly, the nonintervention principle must not apply when military action is required to remedy situations in which human rights are being massively violated, particularly in cases of genocide and crimes against humanity. The prophylactic of law should not be used to protect those persons who commit gross violations of human rights. Justice should not be made the victim of unjust state sovereignty. International law must change to accommodate these new needs and authorize as lawful the possibility to protect all peoples in all states, even if it requires penetrating the traditional shield of national sovereignty. Attaining universal acceptance of that ambition will remain a preeminent challenge in the twenty-first century.
Notes 1. Working independently, Jonathan Charney has also employed this term. See “Editorial Comments [Jonathan I. Charney]: NATO’s Kosovo Intervention: Anticipatory Humanitarian Intervention in Kosovo,” American Journal of International Law, Vol. 93, 1999, p. 834. 2. Article 42 provides: Should the Security Council consider that the measures provided for in Article 41 [diplomatic and economic sanctions] would be inadequate or have proven to be inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security. Such action may include demonstrations, blockade, and other operations by air, sea, or land forces of Members of the UN. 3. Ibid., art. 52. 4. Ibid., art. 53. 5. See e.g. Julius Stone, Aggression and World Order, Vol. 43, pp. 95–6 1963; Derek W. Bowett, “The Use of Force for the Protection of Nationals Abroad,” in Antonio Cassesse, ed., The Current Legal Regulation of the Use of Force, 1986; Lee Stuesser, “Active Defense: State Military Response to International Terrorism,” California Western International Law Journal, Vol. 17, No. 4, 1987, pp. 30–1; and generally Natalino Ronzitti, Rescuing Nationals Abroad Through Military Coercion and Intervention on the Grounds of Humanity, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1985.
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6. See Anthony Clark Arend, “The United Nations, Regional Organizations, and Military Operations: The Past and the Present,” Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law, Vol. 7, No. 3, 1996; David Wippman, “Military Intervention, Regional Organizations, and Host State Consent,” Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law, Vol. 7, 1996, pp. 209; and Joachim Wolf, “Regional Arrangements and the U.N. Charter,” Encyclopedia of Public International Law, Vol. 6, Heidelberg: Max Planck Institute, 1983. 7. See generally NewYork Times, Feb. 14, 1999, p. 11; Ibid. Feb. 25, 1999, p. A25; and Ibid. Nov. 24, 1999, pp. A–I. 8. See Anthony Clarke Arend and Robert J. Beck, International Law and the Use of Force, London: Routledge, 1993, pp. 177–95. 9. William Jefferson Clinton, Statement by the President to the Nation, 24 March, 1999, cited at http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/urires/ 12R?urn: pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/1999/3/25/1.text.l (consulted, 23 June, 1999) (emphasis added). 10. Ibid. 11. Letter from Daniel Webster, cited in John Bassett Moore, “The Destruction of the Caroline,” Digest of International Law, Vol. 2, 1906, p. 412. 12. Letter from Mr. Webster to Mr. Fox, April 24, 1841, British & Foreign State Papers (1857), 1129, 1138 cited in Louis Henkin, Richard Crawford Pugh, Oscar Schachter and Hans Smit, International Law: Cases and Materials 872 (3rd ed. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Co., 1993). For various analyses of this incident, see R. Y. Jennings, “The Caroline and McLeod Cases,” American Journal of International Law, Vol. 32, 1938, pp. 82–99; Timothy Kearley, “Raising the Caroline,” Wisconsin International Law Journal, Vol. 17, 1999, p. 325, and Martin A. Rogoff and Edward Collins, “The Caroline Incident and the Development of International Law,” Brook Journal of International Law, Vol. 16, 1990, p. 493. 13. Ian Brownlie, International Law and the Use of Force by States, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1963, pp. 275–8; and “The Principles of Non-Use of Force in Contemporary International Law,” in W. E. Butler, ed., The Nonuse of Force in International Law, Brill, 1989, pp. 24–49. 14. Yorum Dinstein, War, Aggression and Self-Defense (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed. 1994), p. 244. 15. Philip Jessup, A Modern Law of Nations: An introduction, New York: Macmillan, 1948, p. 166. 16. Derek W. Bowett, Self-Defense in International Law, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1958, pp. 184 – 93. 17. William V. O’Brien, “International Law and the Outbreak of War in the Middle East,” 11 Orbis, Vol. 11, 1967, pp. 716, 721. 18. Myres McDougal and Florentino Feliciano, Law and Minimum World Public Order: The Legal Regulation and International Coercion, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961, pp. 232–44.
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19. See George K. Walker, “Anticipatory Collective Self-Defense in the Charter Era: What the Treaties Have Said,” Cornell International Law Journal, Vol. 31, No. 2, 1998, pp. 321–76. 20. For a bibliography on humanitarian intervention, see Richard B. Lillich eds., International Human Rights: Problems of Law, Policy and Practice, Boston: Little, Brown, 2nd ed., 1991, pp. 604–6, 631–2. The theoretical debates over humanitarian intervention are summarized in Fernando R. Tesón, Humanitarian Intervention: An Inquiry into Law and Morality, 2nd ed., Irvington-On-Hudson: Transnational, 1997, p. 251. See also Sean D. Murphy, Humanitarian Intervention: The United Nations in an Evolving World Order, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996; and Oliver Ramsbotham and Tom Woodhouse, Humanitarian Intervention in Contemporary Conflict: A Reconceptualization, Cambridge, Mass.: Polity Press, 1996. 21. Michael Akehurst, “Humanitarian Intervention,” in Hedley Bull, ed., Intervention in World Politics, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984, p. 99. 22. Natalino Ronzitti, supra note 9. 23. Ian Brownlie, International Law and the Use of Force by States. 24. Moore, supra note 34, pp. 154–5. See also John Norton Moore, “Toward an Applied Theory for the Regulation of Intervention,” in John N. Moore, ed., Law and Civil War in the Modern World, Vol. 3, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1974, pp. 24 – 5. 25. W. Michael Reisman, “Sovereignty and Human Rights in Contemporary International Law,” American Journal of International Law, Vol. 84, 1990, pp. 866, 869. 26. See Richard B. Lillich, “Humanitarian Intervention: A Reply to Ian Brownlie and a Plea for Constructive Alternatives,” in Law and Civil War in the Modern World, supra note 53, at 229; “Forcible Self-Help by States to Protect Human Rights,” Iowa Law Review, Vol. 53, 1967, p. 325; and “Intervention to Protect Human Rights,” McGill Law Review, Vol. 15, 1969, pp. 205–39. 27. W. Michael Reisman, “Coercion and Self-Determination: Construing Article 2(4),” American Journal of International Law, Vol. 78, 1984, p. 642. 28. See UN Doe. S/RES/ 1160 (31 March 1998); S/RES/1199 (23 September 1998); S/RES/1203 (24 October 1998); S/RES/1244 (10 June 1999). 29. S/RES/l199 (23 September 1998). 30. S/RES/1203 (1998), para. 1. 31. Ibid., para. 11. 32. In 1962, the International Court of Justice stated that enforcement action is coercive action as set out in Chapter VII, which concerns threats to the peace, breaches of the peace and acts of aggression. Certain Expenses of the United Nations (Art. 17, Para. 2, of the Charter). [1962] ICJ Reports 151 (Advisory Opinion of 20 July 1962). 33. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 9 December 1948, 78 UNTS 277, 280. The Convention does not, however,
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explicitly authorize the use of force to combat genocide. Under the Convention: Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religion group as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. 34. “Statement on the Situation in Kosovo, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, issued on 9 April 1999 by the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries,” appended to UN Doc. S/1999/451 (21 April 1999), p. 2. 35. “Communique issued on 25 March 1999 by the Rio Group,” appended to UN Doc. A/53/884, S/1999/347 (26 March 1999). 36. See Judith Miller, “The Secretary General Offers Implicit Endorsement of Raids,” NewYork Times, 25 March 1999. 37. At a minimum, these standards should reflect the rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, G.A. Res. 217 (III 1948), 10 December 1948, as codified in the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, opened for signature 10 December 1966, entered into force 23 March 1976. 999 UNTS 171 and the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, opened for signature 19 December 1966, entered into force 3 January 1976. 993 UNTS 3. See also note 104 infra. 38. UN Charter pmbl. 39. Ibid., arts. 1, 55, and 56. 40. Concerning the Barcelona Traction, Light and Power Co., Ltd (Belg v. Spain) 1970 ICJ 4, 134 (second phase). 41. Ibid. 42. Such evidence could be gleaned from independent human rights organizations, United Nations observers, media reports, eyewitness accounts of refugees, and national embassy and diplomatic assessments in the country. 43. Obviously, the concept of “minimum” is fraught with difficulties, since such a threshold will depend upon different circumstances in different situations. The force must be necessary to prevent human rights atrocities, but at the same time protect the troops being sent to accomplish that mission.
PART THREE
Reflections on the Balkan Wars
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CHAPTER 10
Managing Ethnic Conflict in Bosnia: International Solutions to Domestic Problems1 Patrice McMahon
Introduction
O
ne of the most important but least recognized changes in the last decade is the shift from violent ethnic conflict to the management of ethnic disputes.2 Nearly two dozen violent ethnic conflicts were sparked by the end of the Cold War, and by the early 1990s more than 100 ethnic groups were relying on violence to achieve their goals.3 Yet, by the decade’s end, ethnic conflict started to wane and nationalist groups were more likely to rely on compromise and diplomacy than on guns and force. This is particularly true in the postcommunist world where speeches laden with references to democracy and joining the West quickly replaced nationalist rhetoric. Even in Bosnia–Herzegovina, where ethnic strife turned to genocide, concentration camps, and over 200,000 casualties, stability and peace now reign. While hardly resolved, how have ethnic differences been managed? This chapter argues that the ability of Bosnia’s three ethnic groups to live peacefully in one state is due mainly to the international community’s intimate involvement in Bosnian politics.4 After four years of standing on the sidelines, the United States decided to take a leadership role to end the bloody ethnic war. By the summer of 1995, it had developed an endgame strategy that included three basic elements: concerted military action led by NATO; a political compromise with Bosnian
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Serbs that resulted in the territorial division of the country; and guarantees that the international community would remain actively involved in Bosnia’s future.5 These elements have since become strategies for encouraging accommodation and reconciliation among the country’s Muslim, Serb, and Croat populations. Seven years and over $9 billion spent have not resolved all problems, but the strategies used by the international community have stopped the violence, calmed ethnic fears, and, I argue, generated potentially significant domestic attempts to reconcile the past and plan for a joint future. This chapter contends that Bosnia represents an excellent example of the strategies, as well as the pitfalls, of international attempts to manage ethnic differences in divided societies. For good reason, the DPA will be a reference point for future intervention efforts, serving as a test case of the nature and extent to which the international community can influence intrastate politics.6 In the first section, I identify and explain the strategies used to help groups in Bosnia live side by side. I argue that international solutions, rather than domestic ones, have been most important to encouraging peace and stability in Bosnia. Taken together, the military solution, the institutional solution, and the civil society solution represent different, but reinforcing ways of promoting compromise in fragile, heterogeneous environments. Section two provides a more critical evaluation of these efforts. It argues that while international involvement is important for understanding the shift away from violence, such initiatives have reached their limits. In lieu of a conclusion, the final section demonstrates that many Bosnians themselves acknowledge the limits of international involvement and have started taking ownership over the peace building process, developing local institutions to counter the country’s ethnic problems. International Strategies for Bosnia–Herzegovina Led by the United States, the international community was crucial to ending the three and half year war in Bosnia that began in the spring of 1992. The DPA, which consisted of the General Framework Agreement for Peace and 11 detailed annexes described in general terms the role the international community would play in implementing the peace. In the years since, the international community has devoted itself not merely to reconstructing Bosnia as it was before but recreating it anew. The goal of the peace agreement was to establish a multiethnic, democratic Bosnia where hitherto there had been communism, genocide, and chaos. Inherent in this
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goal was that the groups once at war would eventually reconcile themselves to the past, live side by side, and anticipate a shared future.7 Toward these ambitious endeavors, the international community devoted substantial resources to reconstructing Bosnia. About $1,200 per person was made available for the reconstruction of this country, or about nine times the Marshall Plan.8 In some places, the figure is almost double this amount. While pecuniary commitments are easy to calculate, the symbolic importance of Bosnia to the international community is more difficult to estimate. International involvement in Bosnia represented a new, post–Cold War agenda, one that was broad in scope and relied on both top-down and bottom-up strategies for managing ethnic strife. The Military Solution While the international community used military strikes as early as 1993 to protect relief workers, it was not until the summer of 1995 that military force was used decisively to end the conflict. Led by the United States and backed by NATO, the international community relied primarily on coercion to broker a peace agreement. Talks in November 1995 led the leaders of Bosnia, Croatia, and the FRY to sign the DPA a month later. The first and central task of the international community lay in the field of security.9 Annexes 1 and 2 of the DPA govern the cessation of hostilities, regional stability, boundary demarcation, and they entrust NATO with responsibility for the multinational, military force that would be established to guarantee peace. In the past seven years, the international military presence has been the most important force in the reconstruction of this small state sandwiched between Serbia and Croatia. The Implementation Force or IFOR initially consisted of 60,000 troops from 36 countries. With a one-year mandate, IFOR was given four related responsibilities: bringing about and maintaining an end to hostilities; separating the armed forces of Bosnia’s two newly created state entities; delineating and transferring territory between the entities; and moving the parties’ forces and weapons into storage sites.10 NATO’s American, British, French, and other contingents divided Bosnia up into sectors and successfully ended the violence. 11 By all accounts, IFOR completed its narrowly defined military mission within a matter of months. IFOR’s one-year mandate was extended in January 1997; its successor, the SFOR, was given a broader mission, even though the number of troops dropped to about a third. As suggested by its new title and explained by NATO itself, the “Stabilization Force would contribute to a secure environment within which civilian agencies can
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continue to carry out the process of economic development, reconstruction, developing political institutions, and creating an overall climate of reconciliation.”12 This revised mandate implied SFOR’s assistance in providing security for national and municipal elections and promoting transparency and democratization among the country’s three armed forces. In addition to its short-term achievements, NATO officials have promoted security projects meant to help Bosnia wean itself from its dependence on international forces. Dayton mandated the creation of a Standing Committee for Military Matters to bring together the country’s three main ethnic groups for consultation on security and defense issues. To stimulate such dialogue and give meaning to this Committee, NATO launched its Security Cooperation Program in 1997. While NATO was charged with military and defense matters, the UN was entrusted with providing security for the general population. The International Police Task Force (IPTF) took a leadership role in reforming Bosnian law enforcement and ensuring that it met Western standards of policing.13 Since many of the demobilized soldiers had simply moved into law enforcement, the IPTF focused on downsizing, integrating, and depoliticizing the country’s three separate police forces. These challenges proved to be too great for the unarmed voluntary UN force, so in 1998 SFOR created an armed, multinational police force to assist the UN force. In the summer of 2000, the Peace Implementation Council (PIC), the intergovernmental authority that oversees the Bosnian peace process, acknowledged the continued need for extensive international involvement in providing security for the country. In laying out a framework for the country’s future security, the PIC called for the transformation of the Standing Committee into a state-level defense institution, the development of sustainable and affordable force structures consistent with the long-term security needs of Bosnia, transparency of external military assistance, as well as unified command and control of armed forces. Members of the international community, primarily NATO, but also the OSCE, the UN Mission in Bosnia, and the EU, will remain instrumental in moving this vision forward by overseeing and monitoring the activities of Bosnian groups. The Institutional Solution Military coercion was linked to the second strategy employed by the international community to manage Bosnia’s ethnic problems, the creation of a complex state that, at the same time, partitioned the country and kept it together. The militarized Inter-Entity Boundary Line
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partitioned Bosnia and created two semiautonomous entities, the RS and the Federation of Bosnia–Herzegovina, with 49 and 51 percent of the territory respectively. The peace agreement also defined the institutional arrangements of the new Bosnian federal state; the new constitution incorporated top-down and bottom-up mechanisms for integrating ethnic groups and eventually unifying the state. A fundamental problem before Dayton was whether to partition the country or reunify it. Rather than resolve this dilemma, the peace agreement structurally incorporated it. Thus, territorial and military divisions exist alongside joint political institutions, power sharing practices, and the right of return for refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs). The institutional solution offered short- and long-term mechanisms for pleasing everyone without satisfying anyone. Dayton, indeed, created a unified state, which Bosnian Muslims and the international community desperately wanted. Yet, the DPA also ensured that the state was decentralized enough to please the Bosnian Serbs and, to a lesser extent, the Bosnian Croats. Decentralization and power sharing were the twin principles underpinning the Bosnian federal state. Given the military realities on the ground and the international community’s intense desire to end the violence as quickly as possible, the entity governments were given vast responsibilities. For example, the governments of the RS and the Federation, rather than the state, were given primary responsibility for the collection of taxes, education and property rights, and even defense.14 To accommodate Bosnian Croats, power was further decentralized within the Federation by the creation of ten, ethnically defined cantons. To prevent any one ethnic group from dominating the decision-making process, each group was given a fixed number of seats in state institutions. Power sharing between the country’s three main ethnic groups was, thus, ensured by the use of ethnic and regional quotas. Bosnia’s three-member presidency, for example, requires one representative from each of the country’s three constituent peoples. To maintain this delicate balance and regulate the power of majorities, representatives could block legislation if it undermined the “vital interests” of a particular ethnic group. The country’s bicameral legislature was similarly constructed. The 15 seats in the House of Peoples, the upper house of parliament, were divided equally among the country’s three main ethnic groups, while seats in the House of Representatives required that two-thirds of the members come from the Federation and one-third from the RS. Imposing a complex constitutional arrangement on the country’s ethnic groups was just one part of the institutional solution. Other
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institutions, namely the Office of the High Representative (OHR), were created to help implement peace from above, while certain practices, like minority return, would be adopted to reverse the effects of ethnic cleansing and recreate a multiethnic Bosnia from below. Since local actors were coerced to the bargaining table, the constitution acknowledged the central role the international community would need to play in the country’s transition. The OHR, established in Sarajevo, was charged with overseeing civilian implementation, coordinating the activities of international actors, and, if necessary, imposing the international community’s will on Bosnia. Managing ethnic tensions also meant recreating the multiethnic reality through refugee returns. By the war’s end, almost half of the country’s prewar population of 4.4 million became either refugees or IDPs. Ethnic cleansing campaigns were quite successful in separating Serbs from Croats and Muslims and, to a lesser extent, Croats and Muslims. To reverse the effects of these campaigns, Annex 7 of the DPA guaranteed all refugees and IDPs the unqualified right to freely return to their homes of origin. In addition to reversing the criminal acts committed against these peoples, minority returns, in particular, would encourage moderate politicians and dilute the significance of the ethnic and regional quotas in state institutions. The Civil Society Solution It was generally believed that for the other solutions to work beyond the withdrawal of the international community, a democratic state needed to be created in postwar Bosnia. The international community tried to ensure this outcome in a variety of ways, including international monitoring of national and local elections. Yet, elections were only a starting point and somewhat superficial. Democratic consolidation necessitated substantial investments in the country’s civil society. Support for the associational sphere of interest groups, which stands between the private sphere of the family and the market and the public sphere of the state and government, had become a hallmark of assistance to other postcommunist countries. In Bosnia in particular, small investments in civil society development would yield numerous short- and long-term benefits, such as helping to develop a democratic culture of tolerance and promoting interethnic moderation and compromise. In Bosnia and elsewhere in the post-communism world, building civil society was synonymous with support for the creation of local NGOs.15 As a 1998 UN report explains, “. . . the strengthening of civil society, notably through support to non-governmental organizations
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(NGOs), is of primary importance.”16 The number and diversity of organizations focused on developing civil society in Bosnia is astounding. According to the International Council for Voluntary Agencies, over 173 international and some 365 local NGOs, along with international organizations, embassies and government ministries, were involved in civil society in 1999. Local NGOs, almost exclusively supported by external funds, can be divided into two broad categories: democracy NGOs and development or service NGOs.17 Democracy NGOs are organizations devoted to “public interest” causes, such as human rights, the environment, and women’s issues. These NGOs are said to be vital for Bosnia’s transformation because they represent diverse interests and traditionally marginalized groups often ignored by political parties. Since they are interested in affecting policy, they are seen as important tools of sociopolitical change. In theory, the existence of such societal groups mitigates extreme positions, undermines ethnic nationalism, and ultimately creates a culture of tolerance necessary for democracy to take root.18 For Bosnia, any activity that can be undertaken in such a way that it crosses ethnic or political boundaries can become a potential challenge to ethnic divisions. According to Ian Smillie, building tolerance and pluralism in Bosnia is particularly important because without it, “the Dayton Accords . . . and the hope of a united Bosnia and Herzegovina will be lost . . .”19 Most Bosnian NGOs are not democracy NGOs, nor do they seek to challenge nationalist politicians. Reflecting a different tradition and understanding of civil society, members of the international community have also invested heavily in what are known as development NGOs. Rather than engaging political leaders or directly challenging the government, these organizations emphasize the provision of services, community development, and are more likely to be involved in agricultural projects, provide psychosocial services, or programs that focus on youth education. These NGOs are created based on the assumption that in societies with dysfunctional governments the best way to build a robust civil society is to invest in groups that go around government and pursue self-help methods.20 In this context, NGOs provide a different, yet equally important function of promoting socioeconomic development, empowering the population, and indirectly bringing the country together. Annex 3 of the DPA gave authority to the OSCE to “lay the foundation for representative government and ensure the progressive achievement of democratic goals.”21 Since civil society was part and parcel of the achievement of such goals, the OSCE was also put in charge of the
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international community’s effort to encourage the voice and activities of citizens. Along with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and numerous international NGOs, the OSCE has worked to promote “civil society through support for the work of Bosnian NGOs and civil groups.”22 Seven years of support has dramatically altered the composition and nature of Bosnia’s civil society.23 According to one estimate, some 400 NGOs are working throughout Bosnia, three-quarters of which are located within the Federation.24 These local organizations exist in small towns, as well as large cities, and are involved in everything from human rights monitoring to women’s issues to refugee returns. Some members of the international community believe that Dayton’s success and the creation of a multiethnic Bosnia, in fact, hinges on its ability to strengthen civil society. The Pitfalls of International Solutions While solutions developed and imposed on Bosnia by the international community have, indeed, been crucial to managing ethnic tensions, glaring problems and inconsistencies remain. In fact, the international community’s cumulative effect on Bosnia, as well as the status of Bosnia itself, remains uncertain. Conventional wisdom contends that the reason for this is due to the problems associated with civilian implementation while the military mission identified by Dayton has largely been a success.25 Such an analysis assumes that the two are easily separated, and they are not. The reality in Bosnia is that military and civilian activities are highly interdependent, and despite the achievements of military involvement, a great deal more needs to be done. In fact, problems with civilian implementation are directly related to the international community’s desire to keep the military mission as narrow as possible and separate from civilian activities. Unless such thinking and strategies change, international solutions are unlikely to achieve their ultimate objectives in Bosnia. The Reluctant Military The most important military goals of Dayton have, indeed, been achieved. Perhaps the most important change in Bosnia is the palatable sense of security most Bosnians now feel and foreigners require for continued involvement.26 External military involvement has been beneficial in other ways, maintaining the boundary between the two entities and ensuring that all sides of the conflict reduced their weapons. Yet,
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upon closer inspection, particularly when one looks at the obstacles to civilian implementation of the peace agreement, the shortcomings of the military solution become more apparent. Although SFOR continues to broaden its mandate, its reluctance to do so, particularly when it comes to refugee returns, the arrest of war criminals, and the unification of Bosnian institutions, hinders the creation of a self-sustaining peace. Annex 7 of the DPA, which pertains to refugee return, is the single most significant way of restoring multiethnicity to Bosnia. “All other annexes either depend on refugee return, or were created to assist in implementing refugee returns.”27 Under Dayton, SFOR is authorized to provide security in support of the “free movement of civilian populations, refugees, and displaced persons.” Despite this authority, it did not assume responsibility for protecting returnees until 1999. As a direct consequence, refugee returns were disappointing; by early 2000, less than one-third of Bosnia’s original pool of refugees and IDP (some 350,000 refugees and 296,000 IDPs) returned to their prewar places of residence and most of these were majority rather than minority returns.28 Since SFOR has become involved in this process, return rates have improved greatly. This is a main reason, according to the International Crisis Group, why 2000 saw significant minority returns throughout the country and included “breakthrough returns” to areas of the eastern RS.29 Minority returns have either occurred in isolated rural communities or happened with a large SFOR presence and regular IPTF patrols.30 The UNHCR recorded almost 68,000 minority returns in 2000, while the first five months of 2001 registered an even larger increase, with some 30,000 returns.31 These numbers are inspiring and demonstrate the continued and expanded need for SFOR involvement. It also suggests that because impediments to return included problems with housing and unemployment, the dominance of nationalist elites in local areas, and rule of law, as well as a fear for personal security, the military mission needs to be better coordinated with civilian activities. The military solution has also neglected another issue that is crucial for the creation of a self-sustaining Bosnian state—the arrest of war criminals. Annex 1A of the DPA requires that local authorities cooperate fully with the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. While Muslims have for the most part, neither Serbs nor Croats have done much to further this promise. Unfortunately, neither did NATO-led troops for the first two years after the peace agreement was signed. Not only do war criminals remain in the Federation and the RS, but law and order in the country also remains precarious because “the local authorities in many areas of Bosnia are the same thugs” responsible for the war.32 As of August 2001, the Tribunal
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publicly indicted 94 individuals; of these only 22 were arrested by SFOR, 20 surrendered voluntarily, while 27 are still at large.33 Some claim that the failure to arrest war criminals presents the largest obstacle to reconciliation. In a meeting with the Citizens of Srebrenica Association outside Sarajevo, one widow expressed her frustration and anger with the international community, noting that everyone wants them to forget what happened and go home, but Srebrenica is now located in the Serb-controlled RS. Not only are their homes presently inhabited by Serbs, but also many of those in positions of power in the town are the very same individuals responsible for the deaths of their loved ones and thousands of others Muslims.34 As one former resident of Srebrenica declared, “we all know who committed these acts. How can they walk freely among us? How can we return home and ever feel safe?”35 The final limitation of the military mission is the failure to foster the creation of common defense and security institutions. The continued existence of three separate armies, the Muslim Armija Bosne i Herzegovine (Army of Bosnia–Herzegovina), the Croat Defence Council (HVO) and the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS) perpetuates insecurity, as they each maintain doctrines to fight against each other. The three armies also provide nationalists with resources for sustaining their power and exerting their influence. In March 2001, for example, Croatian nationalists exhibited their ties to Croat soldiers when they proclaimed “temporary autonomy” within the Federation and requested that Croat soldiers leave the Federation army. Despite discrete accomplishments, the cumulative effect of the military mission as it is currently conceived and implemented obstructs the creation of a truly multiethnic Bosnia, maintaining what is an artificial distinction between military and civilian implementation. The simple answer to this problem is the expansion of international military involvement in these specific areas and greater efforts to support civilian activities more generally. However, implementing a mandate that would facilitate the creation of a unified Bosnian state is more complex because it requires fundamental changes in the country’s present institutional structure. In other words, problems associated with the military’s reluctance are directly tied to the international community’s institutional approach for managing ethnic problems. Institutional Dilemmas Since Dayton put great faith in military intervention, institutional arrangements developed to accommodate ethnic differences were given
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cursory attention.36 In contrast to the military mission, few people paid attention to the inherent inconsistencies associated with the Dayton constitution and the problems that were likely to result. According to one of the main architects of the Accord, the principle guiding the agreement was “what we didn’t get at Dayton we would never get later,” so everything was put on paper rather than settling for a short and ultimately ignored agreement.37 The product was a complex document plagued by ambiguity and highly dependent on the will of the international community. For Bosnia, the outcome was the creation of a doomed state that does not work and that most do not want.38 The most serious criticism leveled against the international community’s institutional solution is its de facto division of the country. As Annex 4, The Constitution, notes, Bosnia–Herzegovina shall consist of the two entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the RS. While the intention was certainly not to reward the Serbs, critics maintain that this one decision not only legitimized Serb aggression but, in the process, overlooked ethnic cleansing, mass rapes, and genocide. The strategy relied on the use of non-sovereign boundaries to divide ethnic groups as an interim solution while the military restored peace and newly created state institutions worked to create a more moderate, less ethnically charged political environment. While the international community has ended the violence, the promise of an effective central government exists largely on paper. In fact, in the last six years the international community has done little to upset the temporary arrangement. Instead of phasing out what was once conceived of as a temporary piece of a complex puzzle in favor of implementing integrationist mechanisms, the international community continues to support the status quo. The admirable principles upon which Dayton established the federal state, decentralization and power sharing, have unintentionally contributed to the creation of a Federal government that simply does not function. In an effort to please everyone, decentralization gave the entities too much power, providing them with key attributes of sovereignty, such as the right to raise and maintain armed forces, which has severely hampered the state’s ability to function domestically or internationally. Since the state is unable to levy taxes and thus lacks an independent source of revenue, it must rely on the good will of entity leaders to finance its activities. Good will is hard to come by given that many leaders, particularly in the RS and Croat parts of the Federation, are bent on restricting the state’s influence as much as possible. The decentralization of power within the Federation by the creation of ethnically empowered cantons has similarly undermined the viability of this entity.
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Critics of Dayton claim that today’s problems are caused by the international community’s institutional house of cards, which is not only unstable but institutionalizes the very problems that need to be overcome.39 Power sharing techniques, such as the use of ethnic and regional quotas to avoid domination by any particular ethnic group, have not only failed to produce intended outcomes, they have made ethnic identity even more important. The existence of ethnic quotas in the Parliamentary Assembly, alongside other provisions created to limit the power of the majority, means that it is almost impossible for state institutions to get things done. According to the OHR, approximately a quarter of all parliamentary sessions were wasted squabbling over the agenda.40 Even when state institutions are able to agree on the agenda, passing legislation is difficult. Constitutional provisions have created “a formally limited but in practical terms unlimited veto for each of the major groups.” 41 The Parliamentary Assembly has passed some 20 laws, but only because the international community forced them to do so, and few of these laws have been implemented.42 Bosnia’s three-member presidency has suffered a similar fate. While power sharing and consensus building were the reasons the joint presidency was created, the constitution allows any of its members to block legislation if it is “deemed destructive to the vital interests” of any group.43 Deadlocks and parochial interests have negated this institution’s effect, as each of the presidents’ pursues the interests of his ethnic group as well as separate foreign policies. Moreover, the office of the presidency has limited constitutional power and no real administration capacity. Similar power sharing arrangements were institutionalized into most of the state government’s decision-making bodies. Yet, without refugee returns or the creation of counterbalancing institutions that would encourage interethnic cooperation or moderation, these institutions barely function.44 The institutional deadlocks would not come as a big surprise to those who were closely involved in constructing the peace agreement. By incorporating the dilemmas presented to the international community in 1995 rather than attempting to resolve them, “Dayton assured that its implementation would become little more than the continuation of conflict by other means.” 45 In other words, it left the division or unification of Bosnia in the hands of the international community and specifically the OHR, the chief civilian implementing body representing the international community. When the OHR was created, it had no institutional base to carry out its goals. Its staff now exceeds 600, with 220 internationals and 450 locals, and an annual budget of $30 billion.46
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Its growth in numbers matches the increasing powers it has been given in recent years, as the international mission moved from reconstruction to economic and political reform. After two years of “working at the margins,” members of the PIC decided in late 1997 to broaden the powers of the High Representative. The so-called “Bonn powers” provide the OHR with nearly unchecked authority, including the authority to impose legislation and dismiss any public official from office who stands in the way of the implementation of Dayton. Frustrated by local obstruction of Dayton, the OHR has increasingly implemented what Susan Woodward calls a “trusteeship model” of imposing peace from above.47 The principle strategy under this model is to override Bosnian sovereignty in the short term in order to establish a preferred foundation for building it in the long term. Despite its ability to adopt more integrationist measures, the OHR has only selectively made use of its powers, resisting any interpretation of Dayton that might upset the country’s current political balance. Instead of trying to strengthen the central government and undermine the power of the entities and nationalist parties, the OHR has instead fortified its own position, routinely using its powers to introduce legislation to advance international goals.48 By January 2001, over 100 laws and binding decisions were imposed on Bosnia by the OHR. This involvement in the day-to-day management of Bosnia has meant that the international mission to “implement the Dayton Peace Agreement” has never seemed as broad and open-ended as it is now.49 Important breakthroughs aside, the OHR’s actions have sealed the fate of Bosnia’s weak state. Rather than creating a meaningful central government, it has substituted international power for domestic authority. This “substitution effect” has made the OHR, rather than the Bosnian state, the locus for debate and decision-making. It is, thus, not uncommon for Bosnian politicians, civil society organizations, and even members of the government to lobby the High Representative for legislation reform. Most inside and outside of Bosnia believe that some external authority is still necessary, but the risks to both the international community and Bosnia of such a cautious reading of Dayton alongside international attempts to dictate changes are obvious. If the OHR continues to use its powers to fill in for a state that exists only on paper, the international community will become a central pillar of Bosnia’s domestic constitutional structure. Imperceptibly, the substitution effect broadens the mandate of the international community, making it even more difficult for international actors to extradite themselves or to allow central institutions to function independently. The bottom line is that
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international involvement in Bosnian governance, even when it furthers the goals of Dayton, simultaneously distorts the political process and contributes to dysfunctional Bosnian institutions. An Uncivil Society In theory, military intervention and new institutions would provide fertile ground for civil society initiatives to flourish, and Bosnia’s civil society would generate a wide range of interests, replacing nationalism with a democratic culture of tolerance and moderation and ultimately transforming the state.50 Despite the impressive numbers of international and domestic civil society initiatives working to develop a healthy civil society in Bosnia, the state has yet to be transformed nor has the society become particularly civil.51 The reason for this, at least in part, is because the peace agreement itself and international involvement in the years since have directly and indirectly strengthened, rather than weakened, nationalist groups. Moreover, external attempts to engage in what is ultimately an internal process have contributed to the creation of weak and dependent NGOs that rely on international rather than domestic support. Even the constitution emphasizes national identities and downplays individual rights. The Preamble mentions the country’s three constituent nations of Serbs, Croats, and Bosnian Muslims; “others” are recognized as an afterthought, with mere “citizens” barely worth mentioning.52 The constitution foreshadows what would become a reality in post-Dayton Bosnia—the state would be hijacked from the citizens and transferred to the country’s three main ethnic groups. Because of the incentives and benefits of thinking in ethnic terms, Bosnians have not surprisingly clung to their national identities. The most important reason to think in nationalist terms, especially for Croats, is the possibility that if they continue to stand in the way of the peace agreement, the international community might acquiesce to the creation of three entities. According to many, ongoing recognition and support for the existence of the RS continues to fuel Croat nationalism and opposition to Dayton. Other compromises made to end the war have also had a significant impact on the strength of nationalist politicians. For the most part, the international community wanted to start reconstruction as soon as possible. Working with those in power rather than trying to undermine them meant that many of the same individuals involved in building the peace either started the war or were vehemently opposed to the goals of the peace agreement. Institutionally, it meant that the communist power structures remained in place and party control over political and
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economic decisions hardly changed after the war. The three nationalist parties shared a common interest in maintaining existing power structures and sustaining ethnic divisions. As the official representatives of their ethnic groups, the Serbian Democratic Party, the Party for Democratic Action, and the HDZ controlled political appointments and promotion and were responsible for distributing economic resources. These parties were given a boost right after the peace treaty was signed because policy makers in the West wanted elections to take place as soon as possible, even though no organized opposition to nationalists existed. The first election thus resulted in “votes that legitimized the grip of the nationalist leaders already in power—the very same people who had profited politically and economically from the war.” 53 In the last seven years, the power of the nationalist regimes has been sustained, and sometimes strengthened by the international community’s willingness to work with those in power based on the mistaken belief that nationalist elites are the “exclusive conduits between the population and the international community.” 54 When the World Bank entered Bosnia, for example, it did so on the basis of its “post-natural disaster model.” This meant that the Bank’s programs excluded political objectives, based on the false assumption that reconstruction assistance was a public good and was, thus, apolitical. Despite their beliefs and intentions, international assistance has profound political effects. In an effort to rebuild bridges, roads, and infrastructure as quickly as possible, international groups cooperated readily with local authorities, transmitting money and resources through local leaders, even if they were opposed to Dayton. Consequently, nationalist politicians gained even more control over scarce jobs and apartments, and were sometimes put in charge of the distribution of international assistance. Nationalist leaders not only profited materially from aid monies, but their ability to control which local companies were given business for reconstruction work meant that they also gained loyal political followers. The World Bank acknowledged in 1999 that the “implementation of reconstruction programs has been most effective in those sectors where priorities of donor assistance have been established jointly with local authorities.” 55 What this meant was that if they did not work with local groups, they risked delaying the reconstruction process. Yet, if they did accept power relations as they were and agreed to work with local groups, the unintentional effect of their involvement was the strengthening of forces that were opposed to the goals of Dayton and the peace process itself. Ironically, the task of challenging nationalist politicians and uniting the country fell to the most vulnerable actors with the fewest
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resources—NGOs working to develop civil society from the ground up. Research in Bosnia and elsewhere, however, concludes that investments in civil society often do not produce intended effects and they sometimes produce quite harmful results. David Chandler and Robert Bellogini’s work on Bosnia’s civil society claims that there is little evidence NGOs, whether democracy or development in orientation, are effective in any sense at all. As Chandler notes, “there seems to be a large gap between the civil society associations funded and supported by the OSCE, and other international institutions, and the Bosnian people.” 56 Investments in development NGOs, according to Bellogini, have replaced the local public sector and, thus, undermined the country’s long-term ability to develop an efficient state.57 Local NGOs are not only proving ineffective, but on occasion may perhaps be described as counterproductive. Some evidence suggests that international involvement in this sector has hindered transparency and contributed to intense rivalry among local NGOs that are forced to compete for dwindling resources. International involvement in civil society has contributed to greater social fragmentation and, unintentionally, created new hierarchies, with those supported by the international community on top and those that are not on the bottom. In fact, in some respects Bosnia’s civil society is developing according to the preferences of the international community and many NGOs, particularly democracy NGOs, are proving irrelevant to democratic development. Ownership and the Rise of Domestic Solutions International solutions have been crucial to the management of ethnic problems in Bosnia. At the same time, this involvement has yielded mixed results. The inability to achieve the goals of Dayton has puzzled members of the international community. “We are disappointed and mystified that people want a better life and financial support from the West, and yet they are not prepared to vote for the parties which could have made it happen.” 58 Lack of desired results has contributed to donor fatigue, and the number of international organizations involved in Bosnia continues to decrease. While the international community’s declining involvement in Bosnia is not positive, it is not entirely negative, as many Bosnians are becoming frustrated with internationals and the dependent mentality that has emerged in their country. From this frustration and disappointment, domestically driven solutions to the country’s ethnic and political problem have gradually surfaced. Since 1997, the leaders of Bosnia’s three religious communities have tried to work together to help their respective communities heal and
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promote reconciliation in Bosnia. In 2000, under the direction of Jacob Finci, president of the Jewish community and former chairman of the Inter-Religious Council, the development of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission started to take shape. The point of this domestic groups is to listen to people and legitimate their experiences and suffering.59 The Commission will hear and record testimonies from three groups: the victims, those who helped or sheltered victims during the war, and the perpetrators of the violence. In February 2001, a Truth and Reconciliation roundtable was held where representatives of more than 100 NGOs were invited to talk about the creation and potential complications of such a Commission. As of July 2001, plans were underway to hear testimony in 13 places throughout the country within a period of 18 months, with the goal of recording testimonies from 5,000 to 7,000 individuals. Although the estimated cost of the Commission’s activities are between $12 and 15 million, members of the international community have supported this Bosnian initiative, believing, as some Bosnians do, that this domestically inspired and led organization will speed up the process of healing. A second example of a domestic solution is the Coalition for Return, which was formed in late 1996 to facilitate the return process. This network of local, grassroots organizations with some 220 members was created to provide refugees/IDPs with legal assistance, information on property laws, as well as to coordinate with other domestic and international groups. According to a coalition representative based in Sarajevo, people in Bosnia could not really talk about or contemplate returning home because the nationalist parties wanted people to stay put and were opposed to the goals of Dayton. Before the coalition was created, little information or assistance was available for those wanting to return. Coalition members provide individuals with a place to go where they could obtain official information, free legal advice, as well as moral support to return home. Moreover, there are scores of what are known as “localized international NGOs” working in Bosnia. These international NGOs rely on money from abroad but they hire a local staff and are often run by local representatives and a local board that decide the priorities as well as relevant strategies for developing civil society in Bosnia. Catholic Relief Services (CRS) represents such an NGO. After eight years of providing emergency relief programs in Bosnia, the CRS created a range of civil society programs. In simple terms, the CRS’s civil society program provides small grants to communities with good ideas. The only criteria for these grants are that, when appropriate, they incorporate a community’s different ethnic groups and try to build interethnic ties. It also runs Parents School Partnership (PSP) Councils that try to
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get parents, students, and teachers to become more involved in public education. For CRS, education is a key part of the reconciliation and reconstruction process. Despite the arguments made that NGOs have had no effect on Bosnia’s civil society, certain individuals and particular groups have, in fact, benefited greatly from international involvement and the presence of local NGOs. For example, some 100 women’s groups exist in Bosnia and these NGOs have produced tangible outcomes for individuals and, some believe, been important to social healing and reconciliation.60 While it is difficult to measure the impact of these NGOs, interviews throughout the country indicate that women’s NGOs have been effective in providing counseling and support for rape victims, assisted with training and reemployment, and promoting interethnic initiatives in divided communities. This chapter demonstrates that international influence on intrastate politics is not about success or failure but about the range of outcomes inherent when external actors become intimately involved in a state’s politics. For Bosnia in particular it suggests that at the least three fundamental changes are necessary if Dayton’s goals are to be realized. First, the international community must follow through on the promises and objectives identified by Dayton in 1995, which inherently means a broader military mission more closely tied to civilian activities. Second, as many have argued, fundamental changes in the country’s institutional structure are necessary. Finally, international solutions alone will never solve Bosnia’s ethnic problems. In fact, international attempts to control the political process tend to produce distorted outcomes. Self-sustaining changes require, more than anything else, domestic input, institutions and ideas for resolving ethnic dilemmas. To be sure, international solutions and the presence of the international community will remain fundamental to the country and region’s stability, but the best, most long lasting solutions for ethnic harmony are those that will emerge from a dialogue with domestic actors. While neither democracy nor self-sustaining peace has been achieved in Bosnia, a modification of international solutions and more domestic solutions would reason for guarded optimism.
Notes 1. The author thanks David Forsythe, Christopher Joyner, and Jon Western for their comments on earlier versions of this chapter. 2. Ted Gurr, “Ethnic Warfare on the Wane,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 79, No. 3, May/June 2000, pp. 52–64.
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3. In this chapter I use the terms ethnic and ethnopolitical synonymously. See Raymond C. Taras and Rajan Ganguly, Understanding Ethnic Conflict, New York: Longman, 2002, pp. 6–9. 4. Like others, I talk about three ethnic groups in Bosnia because of my inclusive definition of ethnic. For more on this see Misha Glenny, The Balkans, New York: Penguin Booms, 1999, p. 78. 5. Ivo H. Daalder, “Decision to Intervene: How the War in Bosnia Ended,” Foreign Service Journal, Vol. 73, No. 12, December 1998, pp. 24–31. 6. See Marianne Hanson, “Warming from Bosnia: The Dayton Peace Agreement and the Implementation of Human Rights,” in Ken Booth, ed., The Kosovo Tragedy: The Human Rights Dimension, London: Frank Cass, 2001; and Raimo Vayrynen, “Economic Incentives and the Bosnian Peace Process,” in David Cortright, ed., The Price of Peace: Incentives and International Conflict Prevention, New York: Carnegie and Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997. 7. Andrew Rigby, Justice and Reconciliation After the Violence, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2001, p. 12. 8. See Robert Belloni, “Civil Society and Peace Building in Bosnian–Herzegovina,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 38, Issue 21, March 2001. 9. Elizabeth M. Cousens and Charles K. Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2001, p. 53. 10. For information on the history and involvement of NATO in Bosnia, see NATO’s website at www.nato. 11. See Chuck Sudetic, “The Reluctant Gendarme,” Atlantic Monthly, April 2000, and The ICG Balkans Report, No. 10, “No Early Exit: NATO’s Continuing Challenge in Bosnia,” May 2001. 12. “History of the NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” SFOR Informer Online Available at http://www.nato. int/sfor/docu/d981116ahtm. Accessed on 1 July 2001. 13. Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 59. 14. David Chandler, Bosnia: Faking Democracy After Dayton, London: Pluto Press, 2000, p. 67. 15. Interview with Vladimir Stanisic, Civil Society Department, Office of the High Representative, September 2000, Sarajevo. 16. Quote taken from Belloni. The actual report is from the UNDP, Human Development Report, Bosnia–Herzegovina 1998. 17. For the differences in NGOs, see Thomas Carothers, Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve, Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999, pp. 207–51. 18. For more on civil society development and its role in Yugoslavia, see David Chandler, “Democratization in Bosnia: The Limits of Civil Society Building,” Democratization, Vol. 5, No. 4, Winter 1998, pp. 78–102. 19. Ibid., p. 80. 20. Carothers, Aiding Democracy Abroad, pp. 214–15. 21. The Dayton Peace Agreement, Annex 3.
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22. Chandler, “Democratization in Bosnia,” p. 82. 23. I hardly think that the number of NGOs in a country indicates the real strength of civil society, but this is at least one way to get at the real and potential changes in a country’s civil society. See Axel Hadenius and Fredrik Uggla, “Making Civil Society Work, Promoting Democratic Development: What States and Donors Do?” World Development, Vol. 24, No. 10, 1996, p. 1627. 24. Zlatko Hertic, Amela Spacanin, and Susan Woodward, “Bosnia and Herzegovina,” in Shepard Forman and Steward Patrick, eds., Good Intentions Pledges of Aid for Postconflict Recovery, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000, p. 342. 25. Elizabeth M. Cousens, “Building Peace in Bosnia,” in Cousens and Kumar, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 130. 26. Daalder and Froman, p. 107. 27. Is Dayton Failing? Bosnia Four Years after the Peace Agreement. Brussels: International Crisis Group, 1999, p. 31. 28. Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, pp. 73–5. 29. For more on this see, ICG Balkans Report, No. 110, “No Early Exit: NATO’s Continuing Challenge in Bosnia,” May 2002. 30. Belloni, “Civil Society and Peace Building,” p. 42. 31. Ibid., p. 9. 32. Sudetic, p. 2, available at http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/04/ sudetic.htm. Accessed on 2 January 2002. 33. See the website for the Washington-based Coalition for International Justice, an independent organization monitoring the tribunal, available at www.cij.org. Accessed, 8 January 2001. 34. Exact numbers vary but according to David Rohde, about 7,000 Muslims, mostly men died at Srebrenica. See David Rohde, Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe’s Worst Massacre Since World War II, New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1997. 35. Interview with Citizens Association of Srebrenica, September 2000, Sarajevo. 36. Ivo H. Daalder, Getting to Dayton: The Making of America’s Bosnia Policy, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2000, p. 153. 37. Richard Holbrooke, To End a War, New York: Random House, 1998, p. 233. 38. This is one of the arguments I made in “What Have we Wrought? Assessing International Involvement in Bosnia,” Problems of Post-Communism, January/February 2002. 39. See Tony Borden’s comments in his debate with Daniel Serwer, “Review Debate: Is it Time to Rewrite Dayton?” NATO Review, 2000–01, No. 3, pp. 22–7. 40. Is Dayton Failing?, p. 53, fn. 99. 41. Steven L. Burg and Paul S. Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention, Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999, p. 370.
Managing Ethnic Conflict in Bosnia 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.
49. 50. 51.
52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.
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Is Dayton Failing?, p. 53. Burg and Shoup, The War in Bosnia–Herzegovina, p. 370. Woodward, “Bosnia After Dayton,” p. 143. Daalder, Getting to Dayton, p. 180. See the OHR’s website at http://www.ohr.int. Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 129. Marcus Cox, “State Building in Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Lessons from Bosnia,” Report from Cluster of Competence, The Rehabilitation of War Torn Societies (CASIN) Geneva, January 2001, p. 13. Ibid., p. 2. Chandler, Bosnia: Faking Democracy After Dayton, p. 135. For a list of humanitarian and development agencies, see the ICVA Directory published and distributed by the International Council of Voluntary Agencies in Sarajevo. For more on Annex 4, see Is Dayton Failing?, pp. 56–9, particularly page 57. Peter Singer, “Bosnia 2000: Phoenix or Flames?” World Policy Journal, Spring 2000, p. 32. Ibid., p. 34. See “Reshaping International Priorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina.” Chandler, Bosnia: Faking Democracy After Dayton, p. 150. Bellogini, “Building Civil Society in Bosnia,” pp. 4 – 9. Zelijko Cvijanovic, “Bosnia Poll Sparks International Row,” Institute for War and Peace Reporting, 1 February 2000. Interview with Jacob Finci, Sarajevo, July 2001. Martha Walsh, “Aftermath: The Role of Women’s Organizations in Postconflict Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Report 308, US Agency for International Development, July 2000, p. 11.
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CHAPTER 11
From Korea to Kosovo: Matching Expectations with Reality for Modern Airpower in Limited Wars Conrad C. Crane
Introduction
D
uring the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review, some defense commentators proclaimed that the recent bombing campaign against Yugoslavia further heralded a new era of warfare where precision weapons and airpower alone promise swift and decisive results in war with little loss of life or collateral damage.1 However, a closer examination of that 1999 operation reveals much more continuity than change in the American application of air weaponry in war. However unpalatable that conclusion may be for decision-makers, airpower remains an extremely destructive force, which is most effective in achieving strategic goals when targeted against the civilian elements of a society. These technological advances in airpower are part of a broader trend that some observers term a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). Visions of this RMA have created a contradictory mix of increased capabilities and higher expectations. New precision-guided munitions (PGMs) of great penetrating power have made warfare more lethal, though their promise has also inspired expectations that conflicts will now be less bloody. Space-based communications and computers have exponentially increased the amount of information available to commanders, but that has not necessarily increased the quality of intelligence, dispelled the fog of war, or made warfare more predictable.
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Historical analysis can provide us with a tool to get a true perspective on whether these technologies have indeed brought fundamental changes in the application of airpower, the element of military power most dependent on and responsive to technology. A comparison of generally limited conflicts in Korea and Kosovo illustrates the relative continuity in the capabilities of airpower to achieve a political settlement in such situations, and the resulting mismatch with current public expectations. This dichotomy, combined with a different set of ethical and legal dilemmas accompanying the new means of warfare, has created a new moral morass for military commanders and political leaders trying to combine force and diplomacy in international affairs today. Wars are usually decided by destroying an enemy’s capability or will to fight. In World War II American airmen espoused a doctrine of precision bombing aimed at industrial targets that was perceived as more humane and efficient than the city bombing conducted by Royal Air Force Bomber Command against German morale.2 The fundamental tension between these approaches persists today, and was very evident in air operations in Kosovo. Even though the advent of new military technology that is such an important component of the American way of war often heightens expectations that warfare will become less bloody and more civilized, enemies usually react quickly to complicate things. Potential counters to PGMs include threatening a nuclear response, or using shields of noncombatants, both of which threaten to expand, not limit, levels of collateral damage. We will probably never again be so lucky to have an enemy who leaves military forces out in the open desert to be destroyed at our leisure. War games project that future adversaries will hunker down in their cities and make friendly forces dig them out, all the while displaying civilian bodies on CNN. The accuracy of PGMs and interrelationship between the civilian and military sectors of the economy tempt decision-makers to target many dual-use systems with the potential to cause considerable harm to noncombatants.3 Recent events in the “No-Fly Zones” over Iraq have highlighted many of these limitations and counters for precision munitions. After successful American air strikes against air defense positions that had tried to engage aircraft, the Iraqis moved their antiaircraft guns into residential neighborhoods, and their command-and-control center into the historic ruins at Nineveh. Wary about the number of air attacks and claims of civilian casualties, the Turkish government has limited the number of days jets can fly from Incirlik Air Base and forbidden night operations. Faced with a situation where virtually no collateral damage is acceptable,
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the Air Force has sometimes resorted to filling 2,000-pound bombs with concrete instead of explosives. In a scene that is reminiscent of an episode from the Flintstones, multimillion dollar aircraft fly through enemy fire to deliver what are basically laser-guided rocks. A perfect hit is necessary to take out a target, and the damage inflicted is much less, but there is little chance for the Iraqis to garner international sympathy by publicizing civilian casualties.4 Parties of conflicts are required by the Geneva Conventions to direct operations only against military objectives, but international courts have recognized that some collateral impact on civilians is allowable as long as the intended target is primarily a military one. But the interrelated nature of modern economies creates a multitude of targets with both military and civilian uses. A power grid that runs air defense system radios and computers might also pump fresh water to homes. Taking out military communications will also disable civilian traffic. Even the United States routes 95 percent of all Department of Defense telecommunications over public networks. Determining a formula of proportionality between civilian and military aspects of such dual-use systems is open to much debate. Should the evaluation be based on lives or dollars saved or lost, or just on the amount of resulting permanent physical destruction?5 This ethical calculus also applies to precision munitions. Generally saving lives, on both sides, appears to have become the most important limiting consideration for modern warfare. Yet, just as with Harry Truman’s justification for dropping the atomic bomb, concerns about friendly casualties predominate. Saddam Hussein was convinced that he could deter the United States with the threat of heavy losses. American actions after the loss of the 18 rangers in Somalia reinforce such perceptions. Joint Chiefs of Staff planners today acknowledge that predicted friendly losses are a key factor in shaping any contingency operation. Yet RAND studies suggest that potential adversaries should be wary of assuming that killing a few soldiers will always result in American withdrawal. When casualties mount public opinion becomes less tolerant of the status quo, but aggressive and cohesive leadership can maintain support for current operations or even garner support for escalation.6 Lurking in the international consciousness is a suspicion that the United States is always willing to employ its military technology, especially airpower, rather indiscriminately to achieve its goals. Observers in the Third World and countries bombed by us in the past are quick to condemn any significant application of our airpower. After the Gulf War against Iraq, Yasuo Kurata of the Tokyo Shimbun complained that
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Americans are insensitive to civilian casualties because they have never been bombed themselves, and tend to dismiss such “collateral damage” as an inevitable but acceptable “byproduct of aerial warfare.” He implied that Asians and Europeans, sensitized by their own experiences of being bombed, were opposed to the air war against Iraqi cities but that Americans remained ignorant of the costs of such aerial bombardment and did not seem to care.7 Recent limited conflicts have highlighted continuing asymmetries about worldviews concerning the impact of airpower, as well as the aforementioned ethical dilemmas about its application. The American media and military have heightened expectations of the precision that can be achieved in applying force, and consequently obscured many of the realities of war and the American way of fighting it, even when we are not engaged in a total conflict like World War II. Korea and Kosovo Almost half a century ago in Korea, the staff of the Far East Air Forces (FEAF) conducted the first systematic American study of the best way to apply airpower to produce a negotiated settlement in a limited war, our first of the nuclear era. They wrestled with a number of complex issues. Though the quantity of air assets was limited and much was of World War II vintage, Americans expected that their air force could overwhelm any enemy with atomic bombs and conventional firepower. The effects of the postwar drawdown and high wages in private industry left the US Air Force (USAF) deficient in many technical specialties, and some, such as photo interpreters would not be brought up to strength until well into the war. Airmen knew their limitations but were reluctant to reveal them to politicians or the press. By 1951 there was increasing disillusionment with airpower at command centers in Washington and UN forces headquarters in Tokyo, though the FEAF continued to operate on a shoestring. Disappointment was heightened by the marginal effectiveness of aerial interdiction in a relatively static war against an adaptable enemy. Planners looking for a new approach for the application of aerial weaponry in 1952 had great difficulty in selecting the proper alternative targets to influence enemy decision-makers to accept desired terms. The FEAF staff did not know whether the war was being run by leaders in Moscow, Beijing, or Pyongyang, how their minds worked, or what vulnerable items were important to them. Planners also had to deal with the inescapable fact that airpower is primarily a destructive force that is perceived very differently around the world. Its application could produce a political backlash
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in a Third World that still associated any American bombing with the devastation of Tokyo and Hiroshima, and even our UN allies were very reluctant to unleash its full fury.8 The FEAF first decided to attack a dual-use target that had been basically off-limits until mid-1952, North Korean hydroelectric dams and power complexes. While General Matthew Ridgway had been in charge of the UN efforts he had forbade any such operations, considering the power system as primarily a part of the civilian economy. However, his replacement, General Mark Clark, was more aggressive, and leaders in Washington were getting increasingly frustrated with seemingly interminable peace talks. They all approved the escalation in the air war, and the Americans bombed the power complexes in June 1952. The main impact was not in Moscow or Beijing but in London, where an enraged parliament almost brought down Winston Churchill’s government over charges that the war was getting out of control. The raids also reinforced impressions in the Third World that Americans had no compunctions about bombing nonwhite peoples.9 FEAF next turned to an assault on supply and communication centers across North Korea, basically meaning that any town or village with standing buildings became a target. Aerial destruction of built-up areas reached phenomenal proportions during the war. Eighteen of the 22 largest North Korean cities were at least half obliterated. POWs observed that most towns were just “rubble or snowy open spaces.” Civilian casualties far exceeded military losses. That still had not brought an armistice by 1953, so planners focused on what they considered to be the last viable target system, irrigation dams that sustained the North Korean rice crop. The FEAF commander, General Otto P. Weyland, would not allow attacks on such obviously civilian facilities, but his staff convinced him and Clark that holing some of the dams would wash out key rail lines. The UN commanders emphasized to Washington and subordinates that the objective of the operation would be interdiction of key transportation routes, but their planners really wanted to exploit the threat to enemy food supplies. The attacks were carried out in May and the railroads destroyed, though the flood from one of the dams also washed out 27 miles of river valley and sent water into the streets of the North Korean capital. Communist countermeasures such as lowering water levels in reservoirs and building backup barriers soon negated the impact of the dam attacks, shortly before the armistice was concluded in July 1953.10 The Air Force was quick to claim that the “Air Pressure” campaign against North Korean hydroelectric plants, supply centers, and irrigation
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dams was the decisive factor in persuading the Communists to accept an armistice. However, the actual impact of air operations at the time is unclear, though one important long-term legacy is the current North Korean missile development program inspired by memories of the destruction of most of their cities and towns by American bombing.11 Though aerial technology has continued to improve since the Korean War, so have public expectations and USAF promises about airpower’s decisiveness and accuracy. As a result key decisions about the application of military force in most American wars in the air age have been shaped by an overestimation of airpower’s capabilities, and disappointing results have led to an escalation of bombing operations against civilians. The recent air campaign over Yugoslavia repeated that pattern. Again there were high expectations for what airpower could accomplish, even if many were skeptical that primary objectives could be achieved without at least some threat of a ground war. It cannot be denied that airpower was the primary offensive arm that produced a settlement without risking ground casualties, though the results were not those envisioned when the campaign started. When the bombing campaign commenced, President Clinton announced to the nation that the operation had three primary objectives: to stop the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, to prevent an even bloodier Serb offensive against civilians there, and to “seriously damage” the Serb military capacity to do such harm. Bombing did not achieve any of those goals, and in fact helped exacerbate the second. The resulting massacre of thousands of Kosovars must be considered before anyone can triumphantly proclaim the relative “bloodlessness” of the air campaign. Serb ground forces in Kosovo responded to the high-tech air assault with a low-tech ravaging of the whole region. Peacekeepers on the ground are finding that initial estimates of the degradation of Serbian forces from air attacks were also exaggerated, primarily due to extensive use of decoys and deception. NATO reduced its initial claims of tanks destroyed from 122 to 93, and admitted that its investigators only uncovered 26 when they moved into Kosovo. Yugoslav vehicle commanders proved very adept at hiding in villages, using the surrounding community and inhabitants as the human shields. Whether or not the air campaign motivated Serbians to remove Slobodan Miloˇsevic´ from power or only strengthened his hand against a fragmented opposition is still debated. Achieving any of these objectives by airpower alone was made even more difficult by the gradual escalation in the pace of air attacks that reinforced the lessons learned about the drawbacks of that approach in Vietnam. One of the harshest critics of that aspect of the air
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campaign against Yugoslavia was Colonel (retired) John Warden, who developed the theories that inspired the aerial thunder and lightning of Operation Desert Storm against Iraq.12 The full impact of problems caused by consensus building for the air campaign within the 19-member NATO coalition are just being revealed, but it appears that targeting was micromanaged even more than in Vietnam. Exchanges highlighted the differences between American and European views of the application of military force. NATO commander General Wesley Clark and his air commanders wanted to hit power supplies, communications facilities, and command bunkers in Belgrade on the first night, but NATO political leaders wouldn’t even approve strikes on occupied barracks, fearing too many dead conscripts.13 Eventually Clark got approval for a wider target array, but still had to get clearance to attack each objective from any nation with pilots or planes on the mission. New information systems facilitated an amazingly sophisticated target review and development system. A computer network linked NATO planners in Germany, Belgium, and the United States with data analysts in England and weapons experts in Italy. Military lawyers in Germany assessed each target in terms of the Geneva Conventions, confirming its military nature and evaluating whether its value outweighed any risks of collateral damage. Clark held daily teleconferences with NATO and European Command (EUCOM) leaders, and finished the process by passing target lists to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the White House for a final blessing.14 The political and legal constraints resulting from this system produced rules of engagement for pilots as strict as seen in any war in history. Yet with all these controls and precision weaponry, young pilots searching for targets on four-inch square monitors made mistakes. Fears of Serb air defense kept aircraft at 15,000 feet or higher and further increased difficulties of target identification, contributing to the tragic attacks on tractors filled with refugees near Djakova on 14 April. The video replay of the unfortunate destruction of a Yugoslav train passing over a bridge just at the moment that the bridge was struck by a NATO missile was highlighted on newscasts around the world. And as Clark rapidly expanded his target lists, the quality of his intelligence declined markedly. Outdated CIA maps led to the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy on 7 May 1999. Mid-level CIA analysts had actually tried to warn of the target misidentification, but could not get their input into the targeting process in time to halt the mission. Up to then no one at Clark’s headquarters had thought to question the accuracy of the information in their target folders. Newsweek reported that the
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mistake also resulted from a shortage of qualified photo interpreters, repeating a USAF deficiency from 1950. This time the technicians had been lured away by private satellite-imaging firms.15 These errors eroded support for the air war, and put considerable pressure on NATO political and military leaders to achieve results. Clark was close to running out of militarily useful and politically acceptable targets when he secured approval for probably the most important raid of the campaign on 24 May. The destruction of the transformer yards of the Yugoslav power grid disabled everything from the air defense command-and-control network to the country’s banking system. It demonstrated NATO’s strength and dominance to the political leaders and the civilian population. Knocking out the power grid also took away electricity from hospitals and water-pumping stations. Military lawyers made the moral implications clear to Clark. One recalled, “We’d have preferred not to have to take on these targets. But this was the Commander’s call.” All major Serb cities experienced extended power disruptions until a settlement was reached on 10 June.16 Despite obvious differences in coalition members and munitions, there are many similarities between the airpower experience in Korea and Kosovo besides the last names of the theater commanders. Gauging the decision-making process, vulnerabilities, and will of targeted leaders again proved difficult. Problems with limited resources and allies’ sensibilities affected the conduct of the air campaign in both conflicts, though there was an obvious escalation of the assault on dual-use targets as the conflicts continued. Attempts at aerial interdiction of Yugoslav forces appear to have exhibited many of the same shortcomings that appeared in Korea and Vietnam. No technology has yet been developed to control the weather, and unpredictable storms and clouds remain a particularly vexing problem for air operations. Even in Kosovo, airpower did get some important assistance from traditional landpower and diplomacy. While a NATO ground offensive was not used, open discussions about its possibility and an apparent growing willingness to gather peacekeeping forces in the region probably had some influence on Yugoslav leaders. The KLA was also essential in drawing Serb forces out into the open where aircraft could attack them. As in Korea, the Russians, despite their vocal opposition to the NATO attacks, played a key role in persuading traditional allies to accept a settlement. They also assisted NATO by not upgrading Yugoslav 1970s-vintage air defense systems. Modernized antiaircraft technology would have downed more aircraft, and perhaps tested coalition solidarity if casualties had mounted.
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It is clear, however, that whatever sort of “victory” this air campaign achieved was not by “plinking” tanks, or by causing the strategic or operational paralysis advocated by theorists like Warden. Despite European attempts to restrain attacks, a less than final settlement was achieved by the same sort of “imposed cost” strategy as applied in Korea and Vietnam, resulting in massive destruction of the civilian infrastructure of Yugoslavia. Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon speculated that the main factor in Miloˇsevi´c’s acceptance of terms “was the increasing inconveniences that the bombing campaign was causing in Belgrade and other cities.” A broad definition of the term “dual-use” opened up a wide array of targets for NATO airmen, including bridges, heating plants, and television stations. Black humor in Belgrade determined that even bread shops were valid targets because “soldiers also eat bread.” Serb propaganda videos of the damage and casualties wreaked by NATO airpower in attacks on cities, factories, and power plants gained some international sympathy, but the same images that fanned anti-NATO and antiAmerican sentiments may have also reinforced a sense of futility in the besieged civilian population, since their own air defenses seemed powerless to do anything to stop the mounting devastation. When the conflict ended, 45 percent of Yugoslavia’s TV broadcast capability was degraded and a third of military and civilian radio relay networks were damaged. Petroleum refining facilities were completely eliminated. Seventy percent of road and 50 percent of rail bridges across the Danube were down, affecting economies throughout the region. Destruction is what airpower does best, and it contributed to an enormous Balkan repair bill that the president of the World Bank predicted would use up any money available to deal with other humanitarian crises in Asia and Africa. Many Yugoslavs remain very bitter about the NATO bombing, and the Belgrade Center for Human Rights predicts, “the biggest collateral damage will be the shattered possibilities for democracy in Serbia,” because of the backlash against Western values.17 Evaluating and Judging Results Recent RAND studies on the air campaign over Kosovo by Benjamin Lambeth and Stephen Hosmer differ in their opinions about proper Allied air strategy, but agree on why it eventually worked. Lambeth argues that General Clark’s decision for a policy of incremental escalation designed to maintain alliance solidarity was a mistake. Lambeth does not even consider the disjointed air operations conducted to help Kosovo
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as being worth of being called a “campaign.” However, the bombing did reveal significant weaknesses in NATO capabilities, especially in electronic warfare and suppression of air defenses, flexible targeting of ground forces, and interoperability. Serb air defenses remained a threat throughout the campaign, and Lambeth asserts that the air war had almost no effect on the actions of Serb forces within Kosovo. Despite these deficiencies and the wrong strategy, eventually airpower’s ability to destroy fixed dual military–civilian infrastructure targets in Yugoslavia, helped to some extent by Miloˇsevi´c’s loss of international support and indictment as a war criminal, induced him to accept NATO terms.18 While Lambeth’s greatest strength is his thorough operational assessment of Operation Allied Force, Hosmer offers a particularly comprehensive strategic analysis of the air war’s impact. He sets out to answer the questions as to why Miloˇsevi´c did not settle earlier, and why he did not attempt to hold out longer. Hosmer argues that the Serb leader believed that accepting the Rambouillet terms would have endangered his rule, and that NATO could not conduct a sustained air campaign because of Russian pressure and coalition weakness. By holding out he expected to get better terms. According to Miloˇsevi´c and his subordinates, the reason they gave in when they did is because they interpreted NATO’s 3 June settlement offer as a last ultimatum before the beginning of a genocidal air campaign that would have devastated Yugoslavia. Hosmer concludes that the gradual NATO buildup of forces and escalating attacks, along with the bombing of targets the Serbs considered to be civilian, convinced their leaders that the coming massive assault would cause immense hardship and endanger their rule. By June Miloˇsevi´c believed that his war-weary people would now support his decision to avoid more intense bombing, and he could also justifiably claim that the new terms were less severe than those offered at Rambouillet. Contrary to Lambeth, Hosmer believes the bombing’s gradual increase allowed time for pressures to build that would not have been present if General Clark’s airmen had gotten their wish to hit harder earlier. It also ensured the solidarity of the NATO alliance that was the center of gravity for the coalition effort.19 Though there was no hard evidence to support their claim, airmen in Korea were convinced that escalating their attacks to endanger the enemy rice crop forced a settlement. In Yugoslavia, it appears the growing intensity of attacks on dual-use targets in Belgrade and other cities served that purpose. Accordingly, there is a good probability that Yugoslav civilian casualties exceeded their military ones. This is particularly ironic considering the expectations for a bloodless war caricatured so
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well in contemporary Doonesbury cartoons and reinforced by NATO briefings on targeting accuracy. These high NATO expectations for extremely low casualties on both sides helped convince the more reluctant coalition members to support the air campaign, and increased the impact of each scene of civilian dead and wounded. Media images and accusations motivated UN war crimes prosecutors of the ICTY to begin assessing evidence in December 1999 that NATO commanders had violated the laws of war with their air attacks. Michael Ignatieff has aptly pointed out that journalists’ accounts of the maneuvering of cruise missiles in Iraq and fascination with precision munitions have reinforced a myth in Western publics that war can now be thought of as laser surgery. In the dogged pursuit of the ideal of “precision bombing” the USAF has improved its capabilities tremendously, but the term “surgical airstrike” remains an oxymoron. Some targeting errors and technical failures will always occur, and blast effects are often unpredictable. The attack on the Chinese embassy looks even more sinister when we claim perfection. And the two British Gurkhas who died trying to disarm some of the estimated 10,000 unexploded cluster munitions in the area were victims of the flaws that exist in even the most modern ordnance.20 The International Criminal Tribunal declined to pursue formal charges, though more war crimes accusations have come from Amnesty International, and the British parliament’s top foreign affairs panel criticized the bombing as being of “dubious legality.” Estimates of civilian dead from air attacks range from 500 to 2,000.21 Some ethicists are also troubled by NATO’s decision not to risk ground troops and instead to conduct war from a distance. Yale legal philosopher Paul Kahn argues that “riskless warfare in pursuit of human rights” is a “moral contradiction.” Michael Walzer, author of the seminal Just and Unjust Wars, criticizes Western leaders who would not send their own soldiers into battle but were willing to kill Serb soldiers by bombing and risk collateral damage to Serb and Kosovar civilians. He calls that an impossible moral position, and asserts, “You can’t kill unless you are prepared to die.” Just war theory cannot support the claim that Yugoslav lives are expendable, but American ones are not.22 One of the most significant similarities between Korea and Kosovo is that many key decisions in employing military force were based on inflated expectations of what technology could accomplish. Another is that the heaviest casualties in both conflicts were borne by civilians. We must be prepared to face the ethical implications of the success NATO airpower achieved because of the destruction wreaked on the civilian infrastructure and the resultant noncombatant casualties. That does not
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necessarily make this application of military force wrong, but it should dispel any mistaken impressions about the true nature of the destructive force of the new technology. One nation has already begun to apply the lessons of Kosovo to its own international affairs. Though they opposed NATO air strikes on Yugoslavia, the Russians quickly applied the same tactic against Chechnya, trying to force the withdrawal of Islamic militants from neighboring Dagestan without a bloody and unpopular ground war. Critics pointed out that Chechnya did not have an effective central government or control the invaders, but that did not halt the bombs. While Russian newspapers declared “The Kremlin is using the scheme NATO applied in Kosovo,” the Russian Air Force Commander conducted NATO-style briefings narrating combat footage of precision munitions striking targets in Grozny. His forces were also conscious of the need to justify the destruction of dual-use targets. Russian aircraft destroyed Chechnya’s cellular telephone exchange to prevent the rebels from talking to each other, bombed oil refineries to deprive the rebels from black market revenues, and presumably attacked the television station to stop the transmission of misleading propaganda, like NATO did. As the damage to the civilian infrastructure, and the civilian death toll, mounted, more than 100,000 Chechens became refugees fleeing the violence.23 Instead of demonstrating how advances in airpower will allow righteous states to restrain transgressors with a minimum of bloodshed on both sides, the recent conflict over Kosovo has instead shown how aggressive belligerents with air superiority can inflict massive destruction at low cost to themselves. And modern technological change has also brought a merging of the civilian and military sectors of society to an unprecedented degree, creating a broader target spectrum that can be justified for attack. Instead of restraining war or making it less likely, the new technology has done the opposite. It is now much easier to get domestic support to use force when all it requires is to launch a cruise missile or drop a precision bomb. The expectation is that results will be clean and decisive. When they are not, it is also much easier to escalate a conflict as impatience grows, especially when there is a considerable technological mismatch between belligerents. This reality will most likely accelerate the search for ways to counter the new technologies, and further mute the effects of whatever RMA may have occurred. Instead of heading for the sort of future envisioned by airpower theorists like John Warden, when paralyzing attacks on military structures will end wars quickly and with relatively little impact on the civilian sphere, we may be headed for that predicted by Giulio Douhet, when new
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weapons will decide wars by inflicting the maximum amount of distress on the civilian population. As the Italian predicted, civilian will appears to be more vulnerable to the destructive power of modern technology than military capability. After concluding that the attacks on Yugoslav civilians were the key to ending the conflict, one journalist wrote, “That may produce an uncomfortable lesson for the politicians who call the shots during the next war: the most merciful way to conduct a war may be to end it swiftly and violently.”24 The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the positions of the United States Army War College, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense. Notes 1. For some recent examples of versions of this point of view, see Christian Lowe, “Air Force QDR; America’s New 911 Force?” Defense Week, 8 January 2001, p. 1; John Keegan, “West Claimed Moral High Ground With Air Power,” London Daily Telegraph, 16 January 2001. 2. For more on the different airpower approaches in World War II, see Conrad C. Crane, Bombs, Cities, and Civilians: American Airpower Strategy in World War II, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993. 3. Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., Technology and the 21st Century Battlefield: Recomplicating Moral Life for the Statesman and the Soldier, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 15 January 1999. 4. Steven Lee Myers, “U.S. Wields Defter Weapon Against Iraq: Concrete Bomb,” New York Times, 7 October 1999, p. 3A. 5. Ibid. 6. Benjamin C. Schwarz, Casualties, Public Opinion, and U.S. Military Intervention: Implications for U.S. Regional Deterrence Strategies, Santa Monica: RAND, 1994; Eric V. Larson, Casualties and Consensus: The Historical Role of Casualties in Domestic Support for U.S. Military Operations, Santa Monica: RAND, 1996. 7. Yasuo Kurata, “Americans Are Insensitive to Casualties Because Their Country Hasn’t Been Bombed,” Kansas City Star, 5 May 1991, p. 2K, reprinted from the Tokyo Shimbun. 8. On the Korean air war, see Conrad C. Crane, American Airpower Strategy in Korea, 1950–1953, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999. 9. Ibid., pp. 118–22. 10. Ibid., pp. 123–5, 168–9. 11. For the USAF assessment of its performance in Korea, see Robert F. Futrell, The United States Air Force in Korea, 1950–1953, rev. ed., Washington, USGPO, 1983, and James T. Stewart, ed., Airpower, The Decisive Force in Korea, Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1957. For a different perspective, see
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13. 14. 15. 16.
17.
18. 19. 20.
21.
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Crane, American Airpower Strategy in Korea, pp. 164–5. On the inspiration for North Korean missile programs, see Selig Harrison, “The Missiles of North Korea: How Real a Threat?” World Policy Journal, Vol. 17, Fall 2000, pp. 13–24. For the stated objectives of the bombing campaign, see the text of President Clinton’s speech in the New York Times, 25 March 1999, p. A15. On the Serb use of decoys and estimates of damage, see Steven Lee Myers, “Damage to Serb Military Less Than Expected,” the New York Times, 28 June 1999, p. 1. On how NATO damage estimates matched their findings after occupying Kosovo, see Richard J. Newman, “The Bombs that Failed in Kosovo,” U.S. News and World Report, 20 September 1999, pp. 28 – 30. Warden’s ideas are expressed in his book, The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat, New York and London: Pergamon-Brassey’s, 1989. The best critique of his theories is LTC David S. Fadok, “John Boyd and John Warden: Airpower’s Quest for Strategic Paralysis,” in COL Phillip S. Meilinger, ed., The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower Theory, Maxwell Air Force Base, Al: Air University Press, 1997. Michael Ignatieff, “The Virtual Commander: How NATO Invented a New Kind of War,” New Yorker, 2 August 1999, p. 32. Ibid., pp. 32 – 4. Ibid., p. 34; “The Buzz,” Newsweek, 27 September 1999, p. 8. Ignatieff, “Virtual Commander,” p. 35; Martin L. Cook, “Applied Just War Theory: Moral Implications of New Weapons for Air War,” Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics, 1998, pp. 199–219; Rebecca Grant, The Kosovo Campaign: Aerospace Power Made it Work, Arlington: Air Force Association, 1999, p. 22. Michael Dobbs, “Post-Mortem on NATO’s Bombing Campaign,” Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 19 – 26 July 1999, p. 23; Grant, The Kosovo Campaign, p. 22; Bert Roughton, Jr., “Yugoslavs Still Bitter Toward U.S.,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 25 March 2001, p. 12. Benjamin Lambeth, NATO’s Air War for Kosovo: A Strategic and Operational Assessment, Santa Monica: RAND, 2001. Stephen T. Hosmer, The Conflict Over Kosovo: Why Milosevic Decided to Settle When He Did, Santa Monica: RAND, 2001. Dobbs, “Post-Mortem on NATO’s Bombing Campaign”; Ignatieff, “Virtual Commander,” p. 32. The Doonesbury cartoons appeared in newspapers in early May 1999. For insight on the impact of NATO air attacks on civilians, see Dobbs, “Post-Mortem.” He estimates that the Serbs suffered 1,600 civilian and 1,000 military casualties. In contrast, he accepts a figure of as many as 10,000 massacred Kosovars. Jamie Dettmer and Jennifer G. Hickey, “British MPs question legality of Kosovo Intervention,” Insight on the News, 3 – 10 July 2000, p. 6. The low figure of 500 comes from the group Human Rights Watch. They were still very critical of NATO targeting practices and concluded that half the
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casualties could have been avoided. Elizabeth Becker, “Rights Group Says NATO Killed 500 Civilians in Kosovo War,” New York Times, 7 February 2000, p. A10. 22. Michael Ignatieff, Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond, New York: Henry Holt, 2000. 162; Michael Walzer, “Kosovo,” Dissent, Vol. 46, Summer 1999, pp. 5–7. 23. Michael R. Gordon, “Imitating NATO: A Script is Adapted for Chechnya,” New York Times, 28 September 1999, p. A3. 24. Newman, “The Bombs That Failed in Kosovo,” p. 30.
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CHAPTER 12
The Future of Western Engagement in the Balkans Stefano Bianchini and Paul Forage
Introduction
R
elations between the Western world and the Balkans have suffered from uncertainty and ambiguity since the beginning of the 1990s. These uncertainties were due to the political and cultural lack of preparedness of the West in facing the changes imposed simultaneously by both the Communist collapse in Eastern Europe and the violent break-up of Yugoslavia. Many scholars and policy makers have discussed the reasons for this lack of preparedness: a huge literature has investigated the origins of the Western failure to anticipate the Communist collapse, while studies of Western behavior toward Yugoslavia’s disintegration have been mainly focused on the failure to prevent the war, or mediate effectively among the warring parties.1 Meanwhile, the very notion of the “West” has deeply changed. This homogeneous category, once used during the Cold War to identify an undifferentiated political collective that included the United States and Western Europe, has increasingly shown an articulated set of discrete political positions—illustrated by the dramatic tensions that emerged on the eve of the second Iraqi war between the Bush administration and some EU member-states. The ongoing differentiation of visions and interests that constitute the Western world make it an increasingly weaker category for the interpretation of the policies of its constituent countries and multilateral organizations. Trends in this direction could already be seen during the final phases of the Yugoslav collapse and the eruptions of the wars of secession.
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Reading the contributions of our colleagues in this volume, we should recall several key events during the Balkan wars that illustrate this growing differentiation: (1) The increasing tensions between France and Germany over the policies to be adopted toward Yugoslavia and the secession wars in Slovenia and Croatia during 1991 and the negative impact this had on the European integration process; (2) The first Bush administration’s cautious approach to the recognition of Slovenia and Croatia compared with the aggressive approach of Germany and the Vatican in 1991; (3) The EC decision, albeit accompanied by contrasts and irritations among member-states, to recognize these two countries in early 1992, in the absence of a specific agreement with the United States. Washington joined in the decision only after several months later, and in connection with the situation in Bosnia–Herzegovina;2 (4) The difference of opinion that emerged between the Clinton administration and some EU member-states when the Muslim and Croat leaderships proclaimed the end of the UN ban on the sale of weapons in order to face the pressure of the Serb armies; (5) The “cautious” approach of French, British, German, and Italian diplomacy to the Clinton initiatives that led to the Washington and Dayton agreements and encouraged the US administration to select Paris for the official ceremony of the treaty signature and Rome for the first donors’ conference, and to propose a task distribution among the Allies for Bosnian reconstruction; (6) The resistance, expressed particularly by France, Germany, and Italy, to the continuation of the military campaign against Serbia and Montenegro in 1999 and concern about the risks of a land operation. These concerns strengthened the efforts of these countries—with the involvement of Finland—for achieving a ceasefire, which was accepted by the United States with barely disguised irritation. All these and many other events have been noted by many observers, but their implications have been underestimated, probably as a result of the widely shared belief that the Western world was still a convincing, homogeneous, interpretative category. Scholars have preferred to emphasize lack of political will as an explanation for the inability to find a lasting solution for the interethnic tensions in the Balkans, in part
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because of the marginal geopolitical role of the region, rather than examine more fundamental reasons for this embarrassing failure to offer a viable way out of the Yugoslav crisis. Later, under the second Bush administration when a parallel, but still uncertain and contradictory approach was followed by the European member-states in approaching the deepening and widening of their integration processes, the pace of this differentiation increased rapidly. Since January 2001, the new US administration has tried to disengage militarily from the Balkans and leave the European allies with the responsibility for regional peacekeeping. When this project was presented, some unofficial proposals for redrawing the Balkan map that envisaged the recognition of an independent Kosovo and a possible partition of Bosnia, were also outlined by members of the US State Department.3 As some authors in the present volume argue, these highly controversial questions generated discontent between allies. In fact, European member-states were generally uncomfortable with the prospect of US disengagement; in addition, they strongly opposed any proposal for geopolitical change in the area, even if unofficial, fearing that it could have been interpreted locally as an encouragement to nationalist extremists. Lack of a Common Vision Divisions within the Western world did not concern only the diplomatic and political mainstreams as expressed by the official positions of the governments. The aims and prospects of the Balkans, the timetable for implementation of the reconstruction programs, as well as the establishment of a stable geopolitical balance at the local level, were all controversial issues that divided the various representatives of the Western world from within. In other words, when approaching the question of the future engagement of the West in the Balkans—as suggested by the concluding chapter of the present book—scholars have to deal with the West as a differentiated category, containing divergent strategies, and acknowledge that governments, political parties, and international economic subjects, do not share a common geopolitical vision of the Balkan future. This lack of a common vision is a consequence of the attitudes that have shaped Western involvement in the Yugoslav crisis since 1991. The West was at first reluctant to play an active role in the area, but was finally forced to intervene when the crisis affected Europe stability for the first time since the end of World War II, and when Western public opinion was shocked by the horrors of the crimes committed in the region. In any case, the involvement occurred neither on the basis of a shared
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analysis of the nature of the secession wars, nor with a clear—and shared— project for how to identify a consistent road toward a stable solution. The main reason for this “involvement without a common foundation” lies with the strong challenge the Yugoslav secession war posed to the system of international relations at the end of the Cold War: a system still dominated by the absolute principle of sovereignty and the national legitimization of state powers.4 Governments and multilateral organizations, such as the UN or NATO, recognized the strong destabilizing potential of this challenge, but they were powerless to react because they understood that the classic diplomatic approach, based on mediation between conflicting governments, was not up to the task, while at the same time an intervention from outside would have farreaching consequences in the whole international relation system and would need new justifications and legitimizations. Indeed, mediation proved inadequate in the first half of the 1990s, when every attempt at conflict resolution—from the London conference to the Owen–Stoltenberg plan—failed.5 Intervention appeared, at least in the beginning, to be a better option for stopping military actions and war crimes, but it later proved unable to provide a long-term framework for stabilization. While Dayton put an end to the war in Bosnia, and Operation Allied Force ended the persecution of Albanians in Kosovo,6 all these interventions—which affected national sovereignty, though sometimes undertaken without UN legitimacy—were unable to offer a stable future for Bosnia, as its governance, along with Kosovo, southern Serbia, and Macedonia, came increasingly under the authority of the OHR or international bodies instead of the local leaderships, as many of the chapters in this book detail.7 In fact, Western engagement in the Balkans in the 1990s was based on actions stemming from a poor understanding of the nature of the Yugoslav secession war. Anticommunism in the West did not offer efficient tools for dealing with the Yugoslav crisis at the beginning of the decade. Later, local campaigns—sometimes sophisticated as in Slovenia, sometimes brutal as in Croatia and Serbia—suggested to the West that a clash of civilizations was source of the military confrontation. The history of Yugoslavia was interpreted locally, and accepted abroad, as a long history of tragic clashes between ethno-national units, which were culturally disposed not to have any common life. Believing this rhetoric, many saw partition as the “inevitable” way out.8 Thanks to this approach, the ethnic reconfigurations of the Balkan states were pursued and justified by local leaders through war. As Slovenia did not have significant minorities in its territory and Serbia was not
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interested territorially in Slovenia, Presidents Milan Kuˇc an and Slobodan Miloˇsevi´c—in spite of their opposing visions and contrasting political cultures—were able to reach a sort of agreement in January 1991 and confirm it in July, when the Yugoslav collective presidency voted to withdraw the Army from Slovenia, even though the Croatian representative opposed it, and the EC troika had not requested it during its mediation between the parties. On the contrary, Croatia and Serbia were both interested in partitioning Bosnia, but their territorial claims overlapped; in addition, Miloˇsevi´c was interested in keeping control over a swath of Croatian territory. For this reason, agreement was impossible between Zagreb and Belgrade in spite of the fact that some compromises were attempted before the war erupted. Thanks to the declaration of a witness and other well-informed sources, we know that Miloˇsevi´c and Franjo Tudjman met in Karadjordjevo in March 1991 and appointed a joint commission for defining mutual borders; this commission met several times afterward, even after the start of heavy fighting between the Serbs and Croats. 9 In this context, threatened by both the Croatian and the Serbian side, the Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovi´c followed an uncertain strategy, attracted by the idea of saving Bosnia–Herzegovina and accepting an independent, but restricted Muslim state.10 In other words, the Yugoslav secession war was not provoked by a clash of civilizations. The supposed clash was an image constructed at that time in order to legitimize in cultural terms a political project based on the need of local leaderships to redefine their territories, impose a new demographic distribution of the population in order to grant themselves loyalty on the basis of a strict cultural identification of rulers and ruled, and guarantee their own access to local resources, taking advantage of the political turmoil and deregulation of politics in the late communist period. In fact, the Yugoslav League of Communists was tormented by loss of ideological legitimization and by the declining capacity for mediation of its directive organs, in particular the Central Committee and the other party organs. The League was connected to the growing oligopolies emerging in all communist societies, because reforms were restricted to the economic sphere for ideological reasons. In the 1980s, with communist ideology in decline, territorial identification gradually became the unique source of political identification and a touchstone for pluralism. As a result, the power of local leaderships increased dramatically at the expense of the center: when disorganization affected the ability of the central leaderships to govern, rapid disintegration along local or regional lines was an inevitable result.11
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Local leaders pursued this decentralization project in order to achieve a newly minted ethno-national legitimization, in spite of the fact that their approach was the single most important destabilizing factor at work in the area. Due to the long centuries of cohabitation and interaction in the Balkans, a rapid project of political localization could not be achieved without violence. Ethnic cleansing, systematic rape, and calculated war crimes were necessary to build powerful walls between peoples quickly, to establish clear borders and a collective sense of belonging based on separation from the “other,” and to avoid any further possibility of reestablishing channels of communications among members of the Yugoslav community.12 Once this set of priorities had been selected and set in motion by a mobilization of religious bodies and public intellectuals who collaborated in the nationalist revision of language, history, art, and popular tradition, the new ethnic nations were ready to be established. War was the preferred instrument for achieving their goals. The project was attractive, particularly at the beginning of the 1990s, for many groups in the region and some outside it, including the former Soviet areas of Transnistria and the Caucasus, were in search of what seemed to be easy shortcuts to statehood and were beguiled by the illusion that cultural homogeneity makes democracy-building easier, and that state-building offers advantages in the international arena. This nationalist project was consistently connected to the cornerstone principles of the nation-state, shared all over the world, with “nation” reinterpreted in its ethnic dimension and “sovereignty” grounded in a significant stream of thought in the Western world known as the souvérenist school in France. By way of confirmation, the international mediations of the early 1990s, in particular those led by David Owen and José Cutileiro, and by Cyrus Vance and Thorvald Stoltenberg, were aimed at accommodating these ethno-national interests. The dominant approach was based on the assumption that nationalist representatives had intrinsic legitimacy. It was an approach that was not shared by Yugoslav federal institutions, movements and groups that opposed the war, and representatives of “Yugoslavs” or areas of ethnically mixed population. As a result, only nationalists were invited to international meetings convened in order to search for a compromise, although nationalist leaders held firmly to their opposing goals. Inevitably, mediation failed. In the end it took time to understand how great was the risk of this approach for the future of European and international relations. Another stream of Western thinking on the Balkan crisis emerged
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among liberal policy makers and diplomats who, with the support of scholars, tried to emphasize the distinction between civic and ethnic nations, the first regarded as acceptable and the second condemned. The liberal approach focused attention on Miloˇsevi´c and his henchmen, considered responsible for the destabilization of Yugoslavia and the subsequent war. Nonetheless, Miloˇsevi´c—who certainly initiated the destabilization of Yugoslavia thanks to his aggressive policies and promotion of violent solutions—was not alone, because ethnic nationalism— as a political prospect—was shared by other leaders in the region, ˇ sak in Croatia, the leaders of particularly Tudjman and Gojko Suˇ Herceg–Bosna, the Muslim fundamentalists in the Izetbegovi´c party, the Kosovo Liberation Organization (KLO or UÇK) in Kosovo, and the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO or VMRO) in Macedonia, among others. The liberal Western stream also proved to be culturally weak in understanding the nature of the war, and powerless in attempting to define a viable stabilization. Actually, liberals acted under the pressure of souvérenists and a public opinion significantly influenced by their perceptions, who believed that the war could be stopped only by the acceptance of the status quo created on the ground. As a result, they recommended inefficient or counterproductive measures, such as weapons embargos, no flight zones, economic sanctions, and restricted mandates to the UN missions, as analyzed by many authors in this book.13 It is, however, important to note that, on the occasions when the Western world made the decision to intervene in the Balkans, either diplomatically or militarily, including the bombing campaign of 1999, the actions taken were systematically justified as humanitarian.14 In other words, humanitarian, not political interventions, were implemented in an area where political aims and ambitions were in fact the source of war crimes and destabilization. In sum, policy makers were culturally unable to recognize that nationalism, as a political ideology, was responsible for the war. Instead, and crucially, the West looked for humanitarian justifications in order to win the support of public opinion and avoid resistance from souvérenists. Nonetheless, this approach proved to be powerless in offering a convincing alternative to the ethnic nation, leaving the applied solutions, from Dayton to the 1244 UN Resolution on Kosovo, in a political limbo.15 The Stability Pact and the Balkan Initiative A crucial turn arrived on 30 July 1999, when the Stability Pact was launched by the European Union in Sarajevo on the basis of a German
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proposal. More or less simultaneously, the World Bank suggested its own Balkan Initiative. Both approaches applied a regional perspective.16 The Stability Pact combined the regional approach to the Balkan problems with a policy of inclusion, which envisaged the integration of the area in the EU in the years to come. The Balkan Initiative paid particular attention to the regional approach in order to implement social recovery programs. Previously, the United States had established a regional strategy dubbed the Southeast European Cooperative Initiative (SECI) devoted mainly to strengthening economic regional cooperation, and particularly the development of small and medium-sized enterprises. Together, the West had outlined a network of corridors with roads and railways throughout the Balkans, in order to connect the region to Central and Southern Europe, while Italy—again in 1999 and 2000— redefined its regional strategy by giving new impetus to the Central European Initiative (CEI) and the Adriatic–Ionian Initiatives (AII).17 Why did this set of actions represented a crucial turn in comparison with the actions made in the 1990s? There are many reasons that need to be considered. First, these new strategies were political, not humanitarian. Offering an inclusive perspective and a comprehensive method for recovering economies and societies, the Western world showed—for the first time—its awareness that the Yugoslav collapse has opened a regional problem that would have to be overcome by regional measures. Second, inclusion had a double dimension: on the one hand, a regional one, which was supported by many political actors outside the region such as the United States, international economic organizations, and EU member-states; on the other, a specific prospect offered by the EU only, namely the possibility of becoming part of the European integration process. Third, by adopting a regional approach (instead of an exclusive bilateral one), the Western actors offered an alternative pattern to the newly created Balkan states, economically weak and culturally closed to their neighbors. In fact, exclusive bilateral relations (which dominated the previous phase) offered room for nationalist leaderships to imagine that they were “preferred” by the Western world against their neighbors, making relations with the West a sort of zero-sum competition, and posing the risk for Western countries to become hostages of nationalist rivalries in the Balkans. The regional approach had the advantage of outlining a pathway for overcoming these tensions, thanks to the fact that in 2000 a new leadership won office in Croatia, later—partially— in Bosnia, and then in Serbia, when Miloˇsevi´c was overthrown. As a result, a new political picture emerged at the beginning of the
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twenty-first century, in spite of the fact that tensions were still growing in southern Serbia and Macedonia. Fourth, the European Union found specific grounds for playing a role in the area, in connection with its widening and deepening processes. In other words, the carrot of future integration into the European institutions was part of a more complex and ambitious project aimed at strengthening the integration of member-states, creating new institutions, and—gradually—a common defense policy.18 To a certain extent, the EU member-states were forced to speed up the process as a consequence of the NATO bombing campaign in 1999, and later by the decision of the second Bush administration to restrict US peacekeeping involvement in the Balkans. In addition, the EU integration process offered a convincing frame of reference for diplomatic activities that supported an agreement in Ohrid between the Slav and Albanian Macedonians in August 2001, and a new treaty between Serbia and Montenegro, signed in 2002 and implemented, with difficulties, in 2003, which postponed the referendum for independence claimed by Montenegrin leader Milo Djukanovi´c, and created a new Republic of Serbia and Montenegro in place of the FRY. As a result, future Western commitment in the Balkans is largely connected to the implementation of the regional strategies outlined at the end of the 1990s. However, the consistency of this implementation should not be taken for granted, as many of the destabilizing factors and uncertainties that have been described above still play a role: the souvérenists and nationalists still have the ability to mobilize emotions in such a way that the peaceful evolution of the region might yet be derailed. The Stability Pact has raised great hopes for a better future for the peoples of the region.19 In spite of the fact that nationalists disagreed with the regional approach, charging that it was an attempt to recreate Yugoslavia, connections were established between countries in the region and the prospect of inclusion within the EU defined a convincing prospect for countries with disarticulated or destroyed economies, wide criminality, a low level of institutional credibility, and a strong sense of war fatigue, all of which contribute significantly to the containment of persisting animosities. Nonetheless, Western countries saw the Stability Pact more as a coordinating agency than as an autonomous agent able to implement specific regional projects. As a result, lacking substantial tools for its strategy, the Stability Pact did not work as expected. Frustrations grew rapidly and the quality of the Western involvement in the area was again questioned.
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A key point is that Western policy makers do not see their commitment in the Balkans as a long-term effort. Pressured by public opinion and attracted by short-term strategies that prepare the ground for their own elections, they are generally reluctant to invest systematically in the area or to make long-term commitments. At the same time, however, the Yugoslav collapse and the ten years of war that followed require a comprehensive, regional, and long-term effort in order to create a lasting framework for stability. Many aspects should be considered within this framework. Stability cannot be restricted to the military dimension of peacekeeping and peace enforcement alone. An effective Balkan state, based on the rule of law, needs not only a good legislation, but also an efficient police and well prepared judges, able to provide a substantial sense of legal certainty. Their activity has to be developed in countries with a functioning custom systems and effective control of borders, many of which remain undefined in the region. In addition, Balkan state stability requires economic reconstruction with a new approach to the productive system in term of sustainability, environmental protection, and efficient public administration.20 To achieve these goals, a new generation with requisite levels of knowledge and training must take over responsibility. This generation should be aware that the problems and issues it needs to resolve in an increasingly globalized society require a high degree of sensitivity to international cooperation and harmonization. Nonetheless, the countries in the Balkans have suffered, in addition to the other problems that we have mentioned before, from a significant brain drain. The war and the psychological atmosphere promoting intolerance of “otherness” have put a stop to mobility, negatively affecting the university world, the development of research, and the communications systems. In order to overcome the resultant deficits in innovation and development, a long-term regional approach by the West is required, including careful coordination of the strategies applied. As for these strategies, they are connected to two sets of issues. The first is linked to stabilization, the second to the challenge of integration into the EU. Both are interconnected. In fact, the controversies that emerged during the Yugoslav secession war have not yet been overcome, but only frozen; as a result the Western commitment in the Balkans, from the military point of view, is not over. Nationalists have not revoked their claims, as has clearly emerged in Kosovo, in Herzegovina and among Serb democrats in Bosnia and radicals in Serbia at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
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In the Bosnian elections of 2002, nationalists won at the ballot box once again, although their predominance was in part due to widespread voter abstention. As for Croatia, nationalists are leading the polls for the elections scheduled for 2004, although around 50 percent of potential voters declare themselves to be uncertain.21 In other words, frustrations over the lack of results and the absence of speedy recovery are increasing popular disappointment and encouraging a broad sense of disappointment and disillusionment toward politics in general. These feelings might once again strengthen nationalist options, considering that the supporters of such options have shown a high capacity for mobilization. Voter abstention gives them a new opportunity of taking control over the levers of powers. These developments need not lead to new wars, but they can raise new waves of tensions, and promote long-term destabilization. These elements underscore the fact that Western engagement in the Balkans cannot be diminished. Rather, the quality of this engagement and the balance of commitments assigned to the political subjects of the West require serious reconsideration. The United States will reduce its participation in peacekeeping operations, but its political and military engagement will be strengthened, as new US military bases created in the area and revived academic and cultural connections appear to confirm. At the same time, however, the burden of peacekeeping is shifting to the EU. The event is a novelty, particularly because the military dimension of involvement is connected to previous EU engagements in the area, which encompass a wide variety of measures ranging from economic and academic programs to the promise of inclusion into the EU. Conclusion: Today and Beyond The EU’s current set of institutional problems, when compared with those of Yugoslavia in the 1970s and 1980s, reveals unexpected similarities which offer a revealing interpretative angle and help in understanding why it was practically impossible to find a way out for Yugoslavia in 1991, and why it is so difficult for the EU to define a consistent Balkan policy in 2003. In point of fact, Yugoslavia collapsed because its institutions were ineffective, the right of veto hindered economic and political reform, and the Serbian leadership claimed a new, greater weight in the balance of power within the country.22 Substantially, these are some of the core issues that have been under discussion in the European Union since the Nice summit of December 2000.
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German influence within the EU, the right of veto, and the ineffectiveness of European institutions are some of the most relevant topics that are expected to be overcome once the work of the European Convention is completed. Fortunately, the EU does not share with former Yugoslavia an aggressive approach to reforms, as was the case with the Serbian leadership, or a lack of will among its political elites to mediate by institutional means in order to define a new basis for governance. Nonetheless, the European governments must still decide whether the EU will gradually become a new form of state, or remain a large free market zone. In the first case, an alternative to the ethno-national mobilization in the Balkans and in other regions of Europe will be offered in connection with a long-term regional strategy of stabilization and inclusion. In the second case, it is doubtful that the EU engagement in the Balkans will be successful, considering that the crisis in the area was provoked by a wide variety of political factors and not only by poor economic performance. In other words, regional strategies require a strong EU capacity for dealing with Balkan political institutions, legal frameworks, reconstruction of public administrations, sustainable development implementation, the education and training of young generations, university harmonization and mobility, and social recovery with protection for weak categories. All these topics should be developed simultaneously through systematic programs, as well as through institutional harmonization, which can lead to a gradual inclusion of the Balkans within the EU context. At the same time, in order to be convincing, this needs to be connected to EU institutional development, as a viable alternative to narrow nationalism. The political nature of the Yugoslav collapse makes clear that the stabilization of the Balkans is primarily a European problem. Nonetheless, EU engagement is not enough. A comprehensive approach requires the active involvement of the other Western countries, particularly in economic and social recovery, training and financial support, and jurisdiction and legal cooperation through a coordination of strategies. This coordination, however, might be threatened by the disagreements within the Western world that, as mentioned before, appear to be increasing rather than diminishing. If pursued further, their impact on the Balkans can have unpleasant consequences. It is easy, for example, to predict that local political actors will be attracted by the idea of playing on US–EU rivalry, according to a pattern experienced many times in the past. The French reaction to the document signed in Vilnius by candidate countries in support of the US action against Iraq in 2003, as well as the strong US pressure on Eastern European and Balkan countries to obtain
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exemption for US citizens from indictments from the newly established International Criminal Court are a few examples that illustrate how a US/EU and EU member-states competition can be particularly detrimental for weak states and destabilized regions whose governments and political oppositions might be forced to make decisions at the international level. This problem is further exacerbated by trends in US foreign policy, first evidenced during the conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo and more fully developed during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Prior to the NATO intervention in Bosnia, US military analysts decried the inability of the United Nations to conduct effective military operations. Many called for NATO, a tried and practiced military alliance, to step in and deliver a military solution in support of diplomatic efforts to broker agreements between the warring parties.23 Operation Deliberate Force in 1995 was just such an effort, a demonstration of military power staged by NATO in support of the diplomacy of Warren Christopher and Richard Holbrooke. Kosovo, however, proved that even a well-rehearsed military alliance could experience difficulties when confronted with differences of opinion in a multilateral decision-making body such as the North Atlantic Council. Though it now appears that many of the difficulties American planners faced during Operation Allied Force were in fact self-inflicted, the bruising perception of the conflict left many in the United States to conclude that even Madeleine Albright’s “assertive multi-lateralism” should be replaced by a simpler and more aggressive unilateralism, especially after the terror attacks of 11 September 2001.24 Although the North Atlantic Alliance rallied behind the United States to invoke Article 5 of its Charter in response to these attacks, subsequent military actions in Afghanistan made multilateral efforts little more than sideshows in the US war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The long anticipated war with Iraq in 2003 demonstrated the US ability and willingness to go it alone militarily if need be, even at the expense of the British, America’s closest political and most compatible European military ally. Iraq reversed the political equation of the Balkans endgame: instead of using the military in aggressive support of a diplomatic effort, however flawed, the overthrow of Saddam witnessed military objectives overriding diplomatic concerns even at the expense of the transatlantic relationship and the notion of a united Western world. Even the conservative idea of a Western world united by a supposed clash of civilizations was sacrificed to a divisive notion of creating a coalition of those willing to accept US leadership with little debate. Lines were drawn between an old and new Europe, the latter consisting of those supporting American leadership in order to assert a form of political independence from
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France and Germany. These differences are in part a direct consequence of the debates over the Kosovo war which highlighted policy differences within the Alliance and demonstrated a glaring gap between the military capabilities of the United States and the rest of NATO. The air war exposed the inability of even the best equipped and trained European air forces to carry out extended campaigns of precision bombing and to do it at a distance from their home bases.25 In retrospect, it appears that one of the lessons some US policy makers learned from the NATO intervention in the Balkans was that their new way of warfare requires little military support from their allies and, as a result, there is little need to accommodate the political interests of their alliance partners in their global wars against terrorists and rogue states.26 While these policies are usually considered in a global context and from a superpower perspective, in regional terms they can prove seriously counter-productive. They encourage the development of opportunistic alternatives to pro-European ones. Nationalists, jealous and mindful of the power afforded by their proclamations of ethno-national sovereign rights, find new legitimization for their opposition to Western Europe’s demands for legal and political harmonization when the world’s superpower overrides collective security arrangements and multilateral institutions to carve out bilateral arrangements with the “new” Europeans. Encouraging divisions between European countries sacrifices regional stability for short-term political interests, no matter how legitimate they appear in a post–9/11 context. Once again, the Balkans highlight the political contrast between regional cooperation and the ethno-national construction of the state, a construction that is challenged by the European integration process, whose implementation is complicated by resistance of member-states to accept a shifting of sovereignty from national to supranational level. The complexity of future Western engagement in the Balkans is characterized by the coexistence of these contradictory phenomena. The success or failure of future engagement with the Balkans depends on the ability of Western countries to find a shared and long-term strategy of stabilization. However, they should be aware that Balkan stabilization cannot be achieved without serious changes in Europe. These changes concern the national format of the state and the exercise of sovereignty. They are tremendous challenges, but the black hole left by the Yugoslav collapse has far-reaching consequences in the European and international relations system. These are some of the challenges the Western world must face in the years to come.
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Notes 1. For a critical overview see Paul Shoup, “The West and the War in Bosnia: Some Thoughts,” in Stefano Bianchini, Paul Shoup, and George Schöpflin, eds., Post Communist Transition as a European Problem, Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2002, pp. 173–84; Mario Zucconi, “The West and the Balkan Conflict,” in Stefano Bianchini and Robert Craig Nation, eds., The Yugoslav Conflict and Its Implications for International Relations, Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1998, pp. 27–39; John Williams, Legitimacy in International Relations and the Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia, Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1998; James Gow, The Triumph of the Lack of Will: International Diplomacy and the Yugoslav War, London: Hurst, 1997; and Susan Woodward, Balkan Tragedy. Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War, Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 1995. 2. See on this topic see Daniele Conversi, German-Bashing and the Break-up of Yugoslavia, Donald W. Treadgold Papers No. 16, 1998; Sonia Lucarelli, The European Response to the Yugoslav Crisis: Story of a Two-Level Constraint, Florence: EUI Working Papers, 1995 as well as the chapters by Heinz JürgenAxt, Michael Lake, Simon Petermann, Hanspeter Neuhold, and Osman Olcay in Günay Göksu Özdogan and Kemâli Saybasili, eds., Balkans: A Mirror of the New International Order, Istanbul: Eren, 1995. 3. See in particular the report by Brigadier General Keith W. Dayton at the conference sponsored by the US Army War College, The Future of the US Presence in the Balkans, New York: Columbia University, 26–27 February 2001. 4. A significant new category (“conditional independence”) has been introduced in the report of the Independent International Commission on Kosovo, Why Conditional Independence? The Follow-up of the Kosovo Report, ˚ Solna: Tryckeriet Asbrink Grafiska, 2001. See also Stefano Bianchini, “PostCommunism, Post-Westphalianism: Overcoming the Nation–State,” in Bianchini, Shoup, and Schöpflin, Post-Communist Transition, pp. 185–201; S. A. Romanenko, Iugoslaviia: Krizis, raspad, voina—obrazovanie nezavisimykh gosudarstv, Moscow: Moskovskii obshchestvennii nauchnii fond, 2000; Andrew Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998; Metta Spencer, ed., Separatism, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littkefield, 1998; Henry Huttenbach and Francesco Privitera, Self-Determination, Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1998; Luigi Ferrajoli, La sovranità nel mondo moderno, Bari: Laterza, 1997; and Anthony Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. 5. An excellent reconstruction is that of Kasim Begi´c, Bosnia i Hercegovina od Vanceove misije do Daytonskih sporazuma (1991–1996), Sarajevo: Bosanska Knjiga, 1997. See also Stjepan G. Mestrovic, The Balkanization of the West. The Confluence of Postmodernism and Postcommunism, London: Routledge, 1994 and Sabrina P. Ramet, “The Bosnian War and the Diplomacy of Accommodation,” Current History, Vol. 93, No. 586, 1994.
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6. Ivo H. Daalder, Getting to Dayton: The Making of America’s Bosnia Policy, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2000; Steve Burg and Paul Shoup, The War in Bosnia–Herzegovina: Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention, Armonk: Sharpe, 1999 and the memoirs of Michael Rose, Fighting for Peace: Bosnia 1994, London: Harvill Press, 1998 and Richard Holbrooke, To End a War, New York: Random House, 1998. Compare these texts with Nerzek Curak, Geopolitika kao sudbina: Sluˇcaj Bosna, Sarajevo: Fakultet Politiˇckih Nauka, 2002. As for Kosovo, see Enika Abazi, Intrastate Conflicts, International Interventions and their Implications on Security Issues. The Case of Kosovo, in Copri-Working Papers No. 32, 2001; Enika Abazi, “Kosovo: War, Peace and Intervention in a Nutshell,” Turkish Review of Balkan Studies, Vol. 6, 2001, pp. 58–74; William J. Buckley, ed., Kosovo: Contending Voices on Balkan Interventions, Grand Rapids, MI: Willian Eerdmans, 2000; Dmitri Trenin and Ekaterina Stepanova, eds., Kosovo: Mezhdunarodnye aspekty krizisa, Moscow: Moskovskii tsentr Karnegi, 1999; Joseph Marko, ed., Gordischer Knoten Kosovo/a: Durchschlagen oder entwirren?, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1999; and Maurizio Cabona, ed., ⰆDitelo a SpartaⰇ. Serbia ed Europa. Contro l’aggressione della NATO, Genova: Graphos, 1999. 7. Compare, for instance, the interview with Mirjana Kasapovi´c, “Protektorat je logiˇcniji,” Dani, 25 October 2002, pp. 9–11 with the dossier “Frustrirani Ashdown u BiH glumi nogometaˇsa Davida Beckhama!” Slobodna Bosna, 24 October 2002, pp. 21–7. 8. See Zlatko Isakovic, Identity and Security in Former Yugoslavia, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. Compare with: Joˇze Pirjevec, Le guerre jugoslave, Torino: Einaudi, 2001; Alija Izetbegovi´c, Islam izmedju istoka i zapada, Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1996; Miroljub Jevti´c, Od islamske deklaracije do verskog rata u BiH, Beograd: Filip Visnji´c, 1993; P. Stanko Duje Miji´c, Hrvatska do pakla i natrag, Zagreb: Samostan Sv. Duha, 1993; Franjo Tudjman, Bespu´ca povijesne zbiljnosti, Zagreb: Matica Hrvatska, 1990. 9. See the interview recorded by Stefano Bianchini, Sarajevo, le radici dell’odio, 3rd ed., Roma: Edizioni Associate, 2003 and Duˇsan Bilandˇzi´c, in Nacional, 25 October 1996, pp. 40–1. Compare with Sejo Omeragi´c, Dogovoreni rat, Sarajevo: Proton, 2001; Miloˇs Mini´c, Dogovori u Karadjordjevu o podeli Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo: Rabi´c, 1998; Ivo Banac, Cijena Bosne, Zagreb: Europa Danas, 1996. ˇ 10. Sefer Halilovi´c, Lukava strategija, Sarajevo: Marˇsal, 1997. 11. Stefano Bianchini, “The Weakness of the State as a Source of Instability,” in Slobodan Milacic, ed., La reinvention de l’Etat, Brussels: Bruylant, 2003, pp. 307–31; Stephen D. Krasner, ed., Problematic Sovereignty: Contested Rules and Political Possibilities, New York: Columbia University Press, 2001; George Schöpflin, Nations, Identity, Power, New York: New York University Press, 2000; Valerie Bunce, Subversive Institutions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999; Csaba Gombár, Elemér Hankiss, László Lengyel, and Györgyi Várnai, The Appeal of Sovereignty, New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
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12. Tatjana Sekulic, Violenza etnica, Roma: Carocci, 2002; Norman Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in 20th Century Europe, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001; Ivan Ivekovic, Ethnic and Regional Conflicts in Yugoslavia and Transcaucasia, Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2000; Rada Ivekovic, Autopsia dei Balcani, Milano: Cortina, 1999; and Rada Ivekovic, La balcanizzazione della ragione, Roma: Manifestolibri, 1995. 13. On sanctions see Mario Zucconi, Gli effetti delle sanzioni economiche: il caso della Serbia, Roma: CeMISS, 2001. 14. A comparative analysis of the documents that prepared and followed operations and policies of intervention gives a clear picture of the predominantly humanitarian approach to the Balkan crisis adopted by the main international political subjects. See on this topic the dissertation of Barbara Bernardi, Integrazione e Disintegrazione: l’Unione Europea e la Jugoslavia allo specchio, Bologna: Alma Mater Studiorum-Università di Bologna, School of Political Science-Forlì campus, Academic Year 2001–02. 15. Thanos Veremis, Action without Foresight: Western Involvement in Yugoslavia, Athens:Eliamep, 2002 and Rada Ivekovic and Jacques Poulain, eds., Guérir de la guerre et juger la paix, Paris: l’Harmattan, 1998. 16. The main documents on the Stability Pact are available on the official site of the EU at: www.europa.eu.int. In addition, see Sven-Oliver Proksch, Negotiating European Foreign Policy: The EU and the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, Woodrow Wilson School, Case Study No. 3, 2001; Emil Mintchev, South Eastern Europe at the Beginning of the 21st century: New Dangers, New Strategies, New Perspectives, ZEI Discussion Paper No. C 82, 2001 and, by the same author, “Europe and the Stability Pact,” Transatlantic Internationale Politik, Vol. 1, No. 4, December 2000; and Rafael Biermann, The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe—Potential, Problems, and Perspectives, ZEI Discussion Paper No. C 56, 1999. On the World Bank see The Road to Stability and Prosperity in South Eastern Europe: A Regional Strategy Paper, Washington DC: World Bank Press, 2000. 17. Compare Domenico Mario Nuti and Milica Uvalic, eds., Post-Communist Transition to a Market Economy: Lessons and Challenges, Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2003, especially the 3rd part, pp. 293–364; Tune Aybak, Globalization in Europe and New Regionalism in the Black Sea Area: InterRegional Perspectives, paper presented at the ASN Convention, New York, April 2003; Dusko Lopandic, ed., Regional Cooperation in South-Eastern Europe, Belgrade: European Movement in Serbia, 2002; the document CEI Facing the Challenges and Opportunities of the New Europe: Ideas for a Program, Policy Paper of the Forlì Conference, 2–3 February 2001, Forlì: Istituto per l’Europa Centro-Orientale e Balcanica, 2001; and L’Iniziativa Adriatica-Ionica, Rome: Dialoghi Diplomatici, 2001, p. 172. See also Rade Petrovic and Francesco Russo, eds., L’Altra Europa: L’Europa centrale e i Balcani verso l’Unione Europea, Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1998. 18. Compare Heather Grabbe and Kirsty Huges, Enlarging the EU Eastwards, London: RIIA, 2000; Sandro Gozi, Il governo dell’Europa, Bologna: Il
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20.
21. 22.
23. 24. 25. 26.
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Mulino, 2000; and Elizabeth Pond, The Rebirth of Europe, Washington DC.: Brookings Institution Press, 2000. On the debate of the 1990s see Sophia Clément, Conflict Prevention in the Balkans: Case Studies of Kosovo and the FYR of Macedonia, Chaillot Papers No. 30, Paris: Western European Union Institute for Security Studies, 1997; Latrence Martin and John Roper, eds., Towards a Common Defence Policy, Paris: Western European Union Institute for Security Studies, 1995; and Gabriel Munuera, Preventing Armed Conflict: Lessons from Recent Experience, Chaillot Papers Nos. 15/16, Paris: Western European Union Institute for Security Studies 1994. Expectations for an inclusive EU policy had been growing since the late 1990s. See Viˇsnja Samardˇzi´c, Mladen Staniˇci´c and Gorazd Niki´c, Hrvatska i Europska Unija: Kristi i troˇskovi integraranja, Zagreb: IMO, 2000; Jelica Minic and Dusko Lopandic, eds., Preparing Yugoslavia for European Integration, Belgrade: European Movement in Serbia, 2000; Zekerijah Smaji´c, Evropska Unija i zemlje bivˇse Jugoslavije, Sarajevo: Oko, 1997; and Balkan 97, Beograd: Evropski pokret u Srbiji, 1997. Compare the analyses of an international team of researchers who recently published a set of two books on these topics for the Italian Center for Strategic Studies: Stefano Bianchini and Susan Woodward, eds., From the Adriatic to the Caucasus: Viable Dynamics of Stabilization, Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2003 and Stefano Bianchini, ed., From the Adriatic to the Caucasus: The Dynamics of (De)Stabilization, Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2001. “Slovensko istraˇzivanje za Tom´cica,” Jutarnji List, 19 April 2003, p. 5. See Dejan Jovi´c, Jugoslavija: Drˇzava koja je odumrla, Zagreb: Prometej, 2003; Nenad Dimitrijevi´c, Sluˇcaj Jugoslavije, Beograd: Samizdat B92, 2001; and John B. Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia, New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Compare with: Laslo Sekelj, Jugoslavija: Struktura raspadanja, Beograd: Rad, 1990; Vladimir Goati, Politiˇcka anatomija Jugoslovesnkog druˇstva, Zagreb: Naprijed, 1989; and Marijan Korosi´c, Jugoslavenska kriza, Zagreb: Naprijed, 1989. For example, see John Hillen’s arguments in Blue Helmets: The Strategy of U.N. Military Operations, Dulles: Brassey’s, 2000. On the conflict within the American leadership, see Wesley Clark, Waging Modern War, New York: Public Affairs, 2001. Anthony Cordesman, Lessons and Non-Lessons of the Air and Missile Campaign in Kosovo, Westport: Praeger, 2001. On the impact of Kosovo on Clinton’s Iraq policies, see Kenneth Pollack, The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq, New York: Random House, 2002, especially pp. 98–9. Michael Ignatieff in the “The Burden,” New York Times, 5 January 2003, notes that “September 11 rubbed in the lesson that global power is still measured by military capability. The Europeans discovered that they lacked the military instruments to be taken seriously and that their erstwhile defenders, the Americans, regarded them, in a moment of crisis, with suspicious contempt.”
Index Abbé Saint-Pierre 156 Ache Indians of Paraguay 33 Adriatic-Ionian Initiative (SECI) 234 Afghanistan 148, 169, 239 Africa 128 Agency for International Development (see United States) Agenda for Peace 152 aggression 150, 160, 174, 175 Ahmeti, Ali 61 Ahmic´i 147 Akashi, Yasushi 100 Akehurst, Michael 173 al Qaeda 239 Alexander, King of Yugoslavia 5 Albania 50, 59, 62, 64, 135 Greater 56, 61–63, 68, 85 Albanian(s) 6, 8, 59, 66, 67, 174 activists 60 community 50 fighters 68 government 63 guerrilla movements 69 insurgent leaders 61 insurgents 68 Islamic minority 59 KLA 62 Kosovars 62 leaders 67 Macedonian 50, 59–60 militants 30 nation 62 National Army (ANA) 58, 61, 67 National Committee for the Liberation and Defense of Albanian Lands 67
Party for Democratic Prosperity (PDP) 59–60 political leaders 59, 60 political unrest 59 population 58 refugees 30 Albright, Madeleine 239 Algeria 114 Amber Fox (see North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Angola 171 Annan, Kofi 176, 177 anticipatory humanitarian intervention 166, 170–174, 176–181 anticipatory self-defense 172 Armenians 154 armed attack 169, 173, 175 armed forces 191 armed intervention 149, 182 arms embargo 28, 104 Arnaudije mosque 148 “Asiatic mentality” 33 atomic bomb 214 Austria 36 Austrian empire 17 Austro-Hungarian empire 4 autonomy 5 Axis aggression 122 Bacon, Ken 219 Badinter Commission 49, 126–132 Baker, James 124–125 Balkan(s) 55, 81, 85, 86, 97, 107, 133, 219, 227, 232, 234–236, 240 audience behavior and culture 76
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Balkan(s)—continued conflict(s) 75–76, 78, 108, 135, 149, 153 crisis 76, 125 elites 76 endgame 239 future 229 history 68 Initiative 234 instability in 69 map 229 media 75–76, 79, 84 political systems 75, 238 politics 75 population 76 stabilization 240 state(s) 85, 236 UN involvement in 102, 111, 114 war(s) 68, 108, 111, 114, 119, 124, 147, 148–149, 153, 159, 228 Banja Luka 83, 98, 148 Beijing 214, 215 Belgium 217 Belgrade 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 27, 28, 44, 81, 98, 124–125, 136, 219, 231 Center for Human Rights 219 government 140 intellectuals 18 Bellogini, Robert 204 Benelux countries 43 Bennett, Christopher 17, 18, 19 Berisha, Sali 63 Bihac´ 13, 98, 99 Blair, Tony 152 Bonn 46 Bosnia 8, 11, 12, 14, 18, 84, 103, 111, 114, 124, 138–139, 177, 189, 191, 194–195, 199–200, 206, 239 armed conflict 96 ban on arms sales to 12 death camps in 13 end of conflict 100 “exclusion zone” 98
partition 192 recognition of 120 Serbian population in 127–128 three-member presidency UN intervention 93, 100 UN mission in 192 war 31 Bosnia-Herzegovina 4, 9, 11, 28, 30–31, 32, 45, 94, 106, 109, 112–113, 120, 130, 133, 134–135, 148–150, 189–191, 195, 199, 228, 231 admission into UN 104 communal factions 153 EU forces in 51 independent political entity 23 intra-ethnic civil war 18 no-fly zone 20 partition plan 98–99 protectorates in 160 recognition 104 referendum for independence 95, 96 Serb focus on 27 Serbian population in 127 UNPROFOR mandate 97 wars 156 Bosnian(s) army 14, 15, 24, 98, 198 borders 133 capital 28 conflict 65, 83, 104, 153 constitution 131, 193 Croatian army 28 elections 237 federal state 193 governance 202 groups 192 institutions 197, 202 leadership 134 National Library 148 referendum 12 sovereignty 137, 201 wars 101
Index Bosnian Croat(s) 99, 132, 138, 193, 202 ethno-group 31 radical 14 vote for independence 11 Bosnian Muslim(s) 3, 4, 5, 9, 11, 14, 15, 33–34, 96, 105, 113, 120, 133, 148, 158, 193, 202 arms embargo against 12, 104 army 107 crimes 31 ethno-group 31 leadership 139 prisoners 13 vote for independence 11 Bosnian Serb(s) 11, 12, 13, 29, 96, 101, 105, 106, 108, 131–132, 138, 148, 189–190, 193, 202 army 28, 100, 103, 134 controlled areas 102 ethno-group 31 forces 102 units 107 Boutros-Ghali, Boutros 107, 152 Bowett, Derek 172 Brahimi Lakhdar 114 Report 113–114 Brezhnev doctrine 169 Brioni Accords 95 Britain 105 Brownlie, Ian 172, 173 Bulgaria 50 Branson, Louise 18 Brussels 35, 41 Declaration 125 Bulgaria 36 Bull, Hedley 155 Burg, Steven 131 Burkina Faso 128 Bush, George H.W. 125, 228 Bush, George W. 150–151, 154, 229, 235
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Cambodia 33 Canada 172 Canadian peacekeepers 106 cantons 193 Captain Dragan’s Serbian Cybercorps 81 Caroline case 172 Carrington, Peter 127, 130, 132 Cassese, Antonio 159 Catholic Relief Services (CRS) 205–206 Caucasus 148, 232 cease-fire 27, 95, 102, 103, 112 Çeku, Agim 63 Central European Initiative (CEI) 234 Central Intelligence Agency (see United States) Chandler, David 204 Charter of Paris for a New Europe 122, 123 Chechnya 148, 222 China 150 Chirac, Jacques 107 Chomsky, Noam 80, 84 Christopher, Warren 140, 239 Churchill, Winston 84, 215 Citizens of Srebrenica Association 198 civil war(s) 25 Clark, Mark 215–219 Clark, Wesley 155, 217 Clinton, William Jefferson 169, 171, 216, 228 cluster munitions 221 CNN 76, 212 Coalition for Return 205 Cold War 19, 40, 123, 169, 217 aftermath 166 bipolarity 46 camps 35 end of 3, 41, 93, 189 collective security 152 Colombia 148 colonialism 123 Common European Home 35–36
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communications revolution 75 communism collapse of 3, 227 communist (s) 215, 216 bloc 36 power structure 202 Congo 34, 148, 170 Contact Group 14, 16, 20, 111, 121 Council on Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) 35 ˇ ovic´, Nebojsˇa 58 C ˇ ovic´ Plan 58 C Crawford, James 127 crimes against humanity 101, 149, 182 crimes against the peace 157 Croat(s) 3, 4, 6, 10, 13, 14, 24, 158, 228 armies 99 artillery 148 Catholics 25 Community of Herzeg-Bosna 134 crimes 31 Defense Council (HVO) 198 delegation to the League of Communists 44 elections 8 faction 151 fascism 10 forces 147 in Bosnia 11, 14 militias 48 nationalism 202 nationalist parties 9 population 190 separatism 42 Serbian war 27 soldiers 198 state 49 Croat-Bosnian offensive 15 Croatia 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 18, 26, 95, 96, 104, 120, 122, 125, 129, 131, 138–139, 191, 231, 234, 237 and Muslim revisionism 18 confederalist proposal 95 declaration of independence 42, 124
elections 9 Greater 9 independence of 19 independent political entity 23 Independent State of (NDH) 5 Operation Storm 155 Peasant Party 5 People’s Party 20 politics of nationalism 42–43, 95 recognition by Germany 49 resistance of Federation initiatives 45 Serbian population in 27, 127–128 war in 102, 124, 228 Yugoslav republic 40 Croatian Army 132, 133, 134 Catholics 4 conflict 95 Constitution 130 Democratic Union (HDZ) 8–9, 11, 99 Democratic People’s Party 20 elections 94 government 100, 134 nationalist doctrine 94 nationalist party 99 offensive 15 Serbs 27, 96, 125, 132, 135 sovereignty 137 territorial changes/gains 120, 134 Ustashe 5, 9, 27 Crucé, Emeric 156 Cuban Missile Crisis 172 cultural monuments 28 culturecide 28, 29 customary international law 151 Cutileiro, José 232 Cyrillic alphabet 95 Czech Republic 44 Czechoslovakia 36, 44 breakup 123 crisis in 1968 39 Dagestan 222 Dahrendorf, Ralf
37
Index Danube 97 Dayton 193, 196, 200–203, 230, 233 constitution 199 goals 204–206 negotiations 140 Ohio 16 Peace Accords (DPA) 16, 191, 193, 195, 197, 199, 201, 228 De Michelis, Gianni 47–48 Demilitarization Agreement 56 democracy 45, 195, 204, 206, 219, 232 Denitch, Bogdan 17, 18 Denmark 49 détente 35 Dinstein, Yoram 172 Djukanovic´, Milo 235 Doder, Dusko 18 Dominican Republic 171 Douhet, Giulio 155, 222–223 Drina valley 147 Drljacˇa, Simo 158 Dubrovnik 16, 28 Duc de Sully 156 Dutch battalion 103, 105, 106, 110, 113 military observers 102 peacekeepers 107 Djakova 217 East Pakistan 171 Eastern bloc 36 Europe 3, 7 economic sanctions 11, 12, 13, 178 email 81 England 217 Erasmus 156 ethnic cleansing 12, 24, 30, 31, 98, 99, 102, 134, 147, 194, 216, 232 conflict 189 group(s) 189, 193 identification 33 nationalism 195 problems 192 quotas 193–194
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tensions 194 war 34, 38 warfare 18 “ethno-purified” territory 27 ethno reconciliation 32 Euro 36, 49 EuroCorps 47 Europe Central 234 Eastern 37, 41 Southern 234 European allies 229 Command (EUCOM) 217 Community (EC) 10, 11, 12, 13, 35, 36, 37, 38, 41, 42, 44, 46, 95, 98, 104, 125, 127, 129, 130, 132, 135 currency unit (see Euro) defense ministers 111 foreign ministers 126 institutions 43, 235, 238 integration process 36, 43, 228 nations 105 peacemaking force 47 rapid reaction force 98, 111 European Union 49–50, 51, 233, 235, 237 forces 67 Nice summit 237 recognition of Bosnia 96 extradition 156 Far East Air Forces (FEAF) 214–215 Ferhadija mosque 148 Final Solution 33 Finland 228 force (use of ) 165–166, 173, 174, 177, 182 France 14, 19, 37, 43, 46, 47, 105, 106, 111, 156, 228, 232, 240 Rambouillet 30, 121, 136–137, 155, 220 Franco-German proposal 49 “freedom fighters” 169 Fukuyama, Francis 37, 42
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gendercide 28, 29 General Framework Agreement for Peace 190 Geneva 13, 16, 98 Conventions 101, 213 genocidal acts 181 anti- 31 ethnic cleansing 31 intentions 28 stratagems 31 violence 31 genocide 23, 30, 31, 101, 153, 189, 190 convention (see United Nations) in Europe 33 war nexus 25 what constitutes 24 phenomenon of 33 prevention 30 prosecution 101 rhetoric of 27 varieties of 32 Genscher, Hans-Dietrich 48, 129, 130–132 German Democratic Republic (GDR) 36 Federal Republic (FRG) 37 federal system 43 influence in EU 238 leaders 156 morale in WWII 212 proposal 233–234 Reich 157 unification 37, 45 Germany 14, 19, 43, 47, 49, 95, 130, 132, 217, 228, 240 Nazi 32 support for Slovene and Croat secessionist movements 45 unified 44 glasnost 7, 40 Glenny, Misha 18 Gorazˇde 13, 99
Gorbachev, Mikhail 7, 33, 35–36, 39, 40 Gow, James 76 Gowing, Nik 78 Great Britain 14 Greece 50, 77 Grenada 171, 177 Grotius, Hugo 156 Ground Safety Zone (GSZ) 57, 58, 64 Group of Seven 125 guerrillas 65 Gulf War (1991) 37–38, 94, 213 Gutman, Roy 98 Gypsies (see Romani) Habermas, Jürgen 152 Hague 24, 126, 150, 159 Tribunal 157, 160 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (1954) 148 Haiti 94, 148 Helsinki Conference 125 Final Act 122 Herreros 33 Herzeg-Bosnia 14 Hiroshima 215 Hitler 5 extermination of European Jewry 30 suppression of Polish cultural life in WWII 28 Holbrooke, Richard 239 Holland 29, 156 Holocaust 13, 154 Hosmer, Stephen 219 House of Peoples 193 human rights 16, 24, 31, 45, 97, 166–170, 173–182 humanitarian abuses 154, 155 action 174, 181 aid 97, 100, 102, 104
Index assistance 155 catastrophe 152 disaster 151 intervention 104, 109, 137, 149, 150, 151–154, 155, 160, 166, 173, 175–180, 233 motivation 150, 154, 160, 178 necessity 152 pretexts 156 purposes 169, 171, 173, 180 relief 97, 175 violations 153 war 149, 154–156, 159–160 Hungary 44 crisis of 1956 39 Hurd, Douglas 48 Hussein, Saddam 213, 239 Ignatieff, Michael 155, 221 Illyridia 59 impartiality 170 Implementation Force (see North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Incirlik Air Base 212 India 34 intervention in East Pakistan 151 Indonesia 34 information war 75 Inter-Entity Boundary Line 192–193 internal conflicts 166 internal disputes 174 internal strife 174 internally displaced persons (IDPs) 193, 194, 197, 205 International Bank of Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) 39, 40, 203, 219, 234 International Committee Red Cross (ICRC) 13, 97, 158 international community 177, 181, 190–196, 199–200, 204, 205 International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia (London Conference) 98, 133–134, 148, 230
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International Council for Voluntary Agencies 195 International Court of Justice (ICJ) 128, 172, 176–177 International Criminal Court (ICC) 34, 150, 158, 159, 239 International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) 24, 101, 149–150, 153, 156–159, 197–198, 221 International Crisis Group 197 international humanitarian law 97, 98, 149–150, 160 international law 121, 123, 127, 128–129, 152, 156, 165–170, 172, 174, 177–183 international legal regime 150 International Military Tribunal for the Far East 156 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 7, 39, 40 International organization(s) 204 International Police Task Force (IPTF) 192, 197 international prison 150 international protectorates 150 international relations 165 international war convention 150, 156, 159 Internet 75, 77, 80 Inter-Religious Council 205 intervention 170, 183, 198, 230 Iraq 94, 172, 177, 213–214, 217, 221, 238 Iron Curtain 6, 36 irredentist movements 55 Islamic Conference 125 Italy 47–48, 50, 156, 217, 234 ius ad bellum 156, 157 ius in bello 157 Ivo Andric´ monument 148 Izetbegovic´, Alija 9, 11, 12, 13, 16, 20, 231, 233
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Jackson, Robert 119, 123, 157 Japan 156 Jaruzelski, Wojciech 39 Jasenovac 5, 27 Jessup, Philip 172 Jews 4, 5, 30 JNA (see Yugoslav National Army) Johnson doctrine 169 journalists 76, 81, 84, 85 Judah, Tim 18, 62 jus ad bellum (see ius ad bellum) jus in bello (see ius in bello) just war theory 221 Kahn, Paul 221 Kampuchea 171 Kant, Immanuel 156 Karadjordjevo 231 Karadzˇic´, Radovan 11, 12, 13, 101, 131, 158 Keohane, Robert 85 Keraterm prison camp 158 Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes 4, 17 Kingdom of Yugoslavia 5 Kohl, Helmut 37 Korea 212, 214–219 North 215–216 Kosovan Albanian refugees 60 insurgents 67 resistance 60 Kosovar politicians 62 Kosovo 7, 8, 20, 24, 45, 56, 59, 63, 68, 69, 120–121, 135, 137, 140, 150, 154, 166, 172, 174, 176, 182, 212, 216–222, 229, 233, 236, 239 air campaign 79, 81 Albanians 8, 30, 135–136, 138, 140, 153, 175, 230 autonomy 135 conflict 151, 152 crisis in 1981 39
Greater 62, 68 Macedonia border 66 NATO intervention in 3, 63, 145, 154, 159, 165, 169, 171, 174 protectorates in 160 province 4, 6 removal of ethnic majority 25 Republic of 135 Serb control 125 Serbia border 64, 65, 67 stability 64 status in Serbia 30 territory 136 war(s) 156, 240 Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) 56, 136, 140, 158, 218 disarmament 57 members 61, 69 Kosˇtunica, Vojislav 20 Krajina 15, 27, 48, 95, 98, 134 Kremlin 222 Krstic´, Radislav 101 Kucˇan, Milan 9, 133, 231 Kurata, Yasuo 213 Lambeth, Benjamin 219–220 Lasˇva Valley 147 laws of war 101, 150 League of Communists 8, 38, 44, 231 League of Nations Covenant 122 Lemkin, Raphael 23, 25 Liberation Army of Presˇevo, Bujanovac, and Medvedja (UCPMB) 57, 58, 64–65 Lillich, Richard 173 limited war 214 Little, Alan 18 London 37, 38, 46, 215 Accord 156 Conference (see International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia) Luxembourg 47 Lyon, James 140
Index Maastricht Treaty 38, 43, 48–49 MacArthur, Douglas 157 Macedonia 4, 9, 11, 45, 50, 55, 60, 63, 68, 124, 125, 230, 235 Albanian unrest 56 ethnic balance 60 ethnic issue 59 EU forces in 51 Former Yugoslavia Republic of (FYROM) 59, 60, 85, 97 independent political entity 24 insecurity in 65 instability in 66 insurgent movements 56 minorities within 59 peaceful break 58 protectorates in 160 referendum for independence 95 Macedonian(s) Albanians 235 army 61 banks 6 government 60–61, 66, 67, 68 military 61 party 61 politicians 61, 66 security forces 61 Serbs 65 Slavic 50, 235 stability 64 state 62 Mali 128 Manchukuo 122 Manjaca 13, 98 Markovic´, Ante 42, 44 Marshall Plan 41, 191 McCoubrey, Hilaire 151 McDougal, Myres 172 Mearsheimer, John 133 media 77, 80, 148–149, 214, 221 organizations 83, 84, 86 Mesic´, Stipe 131 Middle East 13, 94 Mihailovic´, Dragoljub 5
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Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI) 68 Milosˇevic´, Slobodan 8–16, 18–20, 27, 30, 56, 94, 95, 126, 131, 216, 220, 231, 233, 234 fall from power 64, 67, 82 policies of 77 regime 67 trial 79, 83, 101, 157 “mission creep” 112 Mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina (see United Nations) Mitrovica 79 Mitterrand, François 37 Mladic´, Ratko 12, 20, 101, 158 modern war 155, 160 Montenegro 4, 12, 24, 63, 85, 125, 126, 127–128, 132, 228 Moore, John Norton 173 Moscow 214, 215 Mostar 14, 28, 148 Mount Vlasic´ 107 Muslim(s) 6, 13, 14, 25, 198, 228 army 28 citizens 27 Croat federation 16 enclave 28 faction 151 fundamentalists 233 groups 59 incarceration in camps 98 monuments 29 Party of Democratic Action 9, 11 population(s) 28, 134, 190 state 28, 231 Muslim women rape of 13 National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute 82–83 National Liberation Army (NLA) 61, 67 National Security Strategy 151 Nedic´, Milan 5
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Nepal 148 New York 106, 112 Newsweek 217 Niagara Falls 172 Nicaragua 169 Nigeria 34, 106 no-fly zone(s) 96, 98, 108, 112 nonaligned movement 175 noncombatants 96, 212, 221 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 79, 109, 194–195, 202, 204, 205–206 nonintervention 165–166, 183 norm(s) 119, 166, 176, 177, 183 constitutive 119 humanitarian 148 legal 148 territorial 119–120, 122, 124, 137 universal 150 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 3, 14, 16, 47, 48, 57–58, 67, 68, 77, 97, 110, 125, 136, 140, 174, 177, 189, 191, 216–222, 230, 239–240 air operations against Serbia 56, 100, 102, 108 air power 105, 108 air strikes 108, 110, 134, 176 alliance 220 Amber Fox 67 attack on email system 81 bombing in Kosovo 78–79, 235 bombing of Bosnian Serb targets 15–16, 100 Charter 239 commanders 106, 221 defense ministers 111 enforcement action 175 goals in Kosovo 171–172 ground offensive 218 headquarters 82 Implementation Force (IFOR) 16, 17, 80, 100, 111, 191 information campaigns 82 Information Operations 81, 84
intervention 20, 121, 135, 151, 175 intervention in Kosovo 3, 63, 145, 154, 159, 165, 169, 171, 174 intervention in the Gulf War 47 Kosovo Force (KFOR) 56, 58, 64–65, 66, 67, 85 leaders 218 member states 136 no-fly zone 15 North Atlantic Alliance 239 North Atlantic Council 66, 109, 151, 239 North Atlantic Treaty 152 officials 66, 192 Operation Allied Force 56, 65, 137, 155, 220, 230, 239 Operation Delta Force 98 Operation Deliberate Force 100, 239 Operation Deny Flight 108 pressure on Milosˇevic´ 30 response to Macedonian insurgency 66 secretary general 136, 151 six point program 64 southern region 109 Stabilization Force (SFOR) 17, 101, 191–192, 196, 198 Task Force Fox 67 tilt toward Serbian and Macedonian governments 68 troops 66, 197 use of force 175 Verification Mission over Kosovo 175 warplanes 107 nuclear era 214 Nuremberg Tribunals 101, 156–157 Nye, Joseph 85 O’Brien, William V. 172 Office of the High Representative (OHR) 194, 200–201 Ohrid Treaty 50, 235 Omarska prison camp 13, 158
Index
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Open Broadcast Network 83 OpenNet website 77 Operation Allied Force (see North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Operation Deny Flight (see North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Operation Desert Storm 217 Operation Essential Harvest 66 Operation Storm (see Croatia) Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) 97, 129, 158, 192, 195–196, 204 Council of Foreign Ministers 124 Verification Mission in Kosovo 174 Oric´, Nasim 158 Orthodox Church(es) 4, 148 Serbs 4, 25 Slavic majority 59 Osijek 13 Osimo treaty 48 Osirak nuclear reactor 172 Ottoman Armenians 33 bridge 28 empire 4, 17 genocide of 1915 154 legacy 148 Owen, David 139, 232 Owen-Stoltenberg plan 230
Pol Pot 33 Poland 36, 39, 44 Solidarity movement 39 political independence 169 Portugal 50 post-Cold War 140 precision-guided munitions (PGM) 211–213 preemptive intervention 150, 178 preemptive self-defense 173 Presˇevo Albanians 64 insurgents 68 issue 64 KLA fighters in 67 Serb officials 64 Valley 56–58, 62, 64 Preventive Deployment Force (see United Nations) Prevlaka 100 Prijedor 158 prisoners of war (POW) 215 Prisˇtina 67, 81 psychology of extermination 31 public opinion 41, 49, 177, 229, 236 Pyongyang 214
pacifism 156 Pale 96, 102 Panama 177 Parents School Partnership (PSP) 205 Paris 17, 20, 46, 228 Peace Implementation Council (PIC) 192, 201 peacekeeping (see United Nations) Penn, William 156 perestroika 17, 20, 40 Perez de Cuéllar, Javier 107, 126, 130, 132 Plavsˇic´, Biljana 83
Racˇak massacre 79 racial discrimination 177 Radio B92 77 Radio Free Europe (RFE) 78 Radio Jugoslavija 83 Radio Televizija Srbije 83 Rambouillet (see France) Rambouillet Agreement 33 RAND 213, 219 rape 13, 98, 114 Reagan doctrine 169 Reagan, Ronald 40 reconciliation 192
Qosja, Rexhep 62 Quadrennial Defense Review (see United States)
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256
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Red Cross (see International Committee Red Cross) refugee(s) 16, 98, 100, 114, 197, 205 Serbian 100 regional organizations 97, 167, 169 Reinhardt, Klaus 65 Reisman, W. Michael 173 relief workers 191 Republika Srpska 134, 193, 198, 199, 202 Army of (VRS) 198 Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) 211, 222 Ridgway, Matthew 215 Robertson, Lord George 65, 66 “Robohacks” 78 Rogel, Carole 5–6 rouge states 240 Roma minorities 30 Roman Catholics 4 Romani (Gypsies) 25 Romania 50 Rome 228 Ronzitti, Natalino 173 Rose, Sir Michael 109 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 156 Royal Air Force Bomber Command 212 Rubin, Alfred 150, 157 Russia 16 Russian(s) 106 Air Force 222 Federation 150 Rwanda 34, 94, 109, 113, 148, 177 Rwandan Tutsies 33 “safe areas” 97, 99, 108, 112–114, 133 “safe cities” 29 “safe havens” 13, 15 Solana, Javier 151 “sanctions coordinator” 97 Sarajevo 12, 13, 14, 15, 81, 85, 100, 102, 108–109, 194, 198, 205, 233 airport 97, 104 Bosnian capital 114
designated “safe area” 99 “exclusion zone around” 98 government 131, 139 headquarters for UNPROFOR 96 library 29 Serbian siege of 28, 29 targeted by Serbs 108, 110 secessionist movements 55 self-defense 109–110, 113, 151, 152, 165, 172–173, 182 anticipatory 150, 169 collective 167 individual 167 preemptive 169 self-determination, right of 4, 45, 48, 122–123, 125, 126, 128, 167 Serbanizing 12, 15 Silber, Laura 18 Serb(s) 3, 6, 8, 14, 16, 18, 24, 96, 98, 139, 158, 199, 216 aggression 77, 129, 199 air defense 217, 220 armies 228 atrocities committed by 13 Chetniks 5 cities 218 democrats 236 faction 151, 153 forces 57, 216, 218 independent political entity 23 irregulars 125 militias 48 minority in Slovenia 13 nationalist ambitions 94 nationalists 8 nationalist parties 9 Orthodox 25 paramilitaries 147 politicians 129 population 48, 190 population in Bosnia 11 propaganda 219 Republic 12, 15, 147 shelling of Bihac´ 106 soldiers 221
Index Serbia 4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 46, 55, 99, 104, 126, 127–128, 132, 175, 191, 230–231, 234–235 and Montenegro 132–133 elections 9 greater 7, 46, 96 insurgent movements 56 king of 5 northern 7 Republic of 58 Yugoslav republic 40 Serbian(s) 4 Academy of Science and Arts 8 Albanians 58 artillery 29 attacks against 57 authorities 153 Constitution 5 Croatian confrontation 26 Democratic Party 11, 203 drive to change borders 120 faction 159 hegemonic state 27 journalists 84 Krajina, Republic of 134 media 77 military capacity 172 military targets 176 minorities 27, 30, 95 nationalism 96 population 127 refugees 30 security forces 64 territorial gains 120 use of cyberspace 81 war aims 113 websites 77 Serbo-Yugoslav forces 26 Shoup, Paul 131 Sierra Leone 148 Simpson, John 82 Six Days’ War 172 Skiaker, Thorstein 66
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Skopje 50, 65, 81 government 58, 59–60 slavery 177 Slavic community 50 Slavonia 27, 48 Slovakia 44, 50 Slovene(s) 3, 4 delegation to the League of Communists 44 reservists 46 separatism 42 state 49 war 95 Slovenia 4, 7, 9, 10, 95, 124, 125, 228, 230 armed confrontation 47 confederalist proposal 95 declaration of independence 42, 46 elections 9 ethnic homogeneity 26 German minority 26 Hungarian minority 26 independence of 19 independent political entity 23 Italian minority 26 politics of nationalism 42–3 recognition by Germany 49 resistance of Federation initiatives 45 Yugoslav republic 40 Slovenian war of independence 26 Smillie, Ian 195 Somalia 94, 148, 177, 213 Southeast European Cooperative Initiative (SECI) 234 souverenists 232–233, 235 sovereignty 121, 134, 149–150, 153, 165, 168, 182–183 Soviet(s) 169 bloc 7, 35, 39 breakup 123 camp 19 collapse 19
258
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Soviet(s)—continued Communist Party 35 domination of East 37 threat of intervention 94 Union 33, 39, 40, 125 Soviet Union 3, 6, 7 Spain 50 sporazum 5 Srebrenica 13, 101, 102, 106, 107, 110 as a safe city 29, 99 fall of 147 massacre of Muslims 15, 113–114 overrun by Serbs 100, 105 Report 113 Sri Lanka 148 Stability Pact 233, 235 Stabilization Force (see North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Standing Committee for Military Matters 192 Stari most 148 Stoltenberg, Thorvald 232 Sudan 148 Sˇusˇak, Gojko 233 Tadic´, Miroslav 157 Tajikistan 148 Taliban 239 Talic´, Momir 158 Tanusˇevci 61 Task Force Fox (see North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Taylor, Philip 80 Territorial Defense Forces 10 territorial integrity 165, 168, 173, 180 terrorist states 240 Tetovo University 60 Thatcher, Margaret 37 Third World 213, 215 Tirana 63 Tito, Josip Broz 3, 5, 6 death of 7 nonalignment policy 39 Tokyo Shimbun 213 Tokyo 215 Tribunals 101, 156–157
“total exclusion zones” 102 Transnistria 232 Travnik 99 Treaty of Rome 36 Trnopolje prison camp 13, 158 Truman, Harry 213 Truth and Reconciliation Commission 205 Tudjman, Franjo 9, 10, 15, 16, 18, 27, 94, 99, 126, 155, 231, 233 death of 20 government 95 Turks 154 Tuzla 13, 99 twenty-first century 183, 236 Uganda 171 Ukraine 106 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (see Soviet Union) United Kingdom 37, 38, 43, 46, 49, 106, 111, 156 United Nations (UN) 11, 12, 13, 15, 105, 125, 130, 166, 230, 233, 239 admission of Bosnia 96 article 2(4) 104 ban on sale of weapons 14, 95 chain of command 110 Charter 98, 101, 104, 109, 122–123, 130, 151, 152, 156, 157, 159, 165–176, 179–182 commanders 109 Commission of Experts 101 Confidence Restoration Operation (UNCRO) 100 Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide 23, 153, 175 enforcement actions 168 force(s) 14, 98, 192 General Assembly 112–113, 122 guidelines 151 headquarters 107 High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) 84–85, 96, 97, 112, 114
Index hostages 111, 113 intervention 20 involvement in the Balkans 93, 95, 101 Mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina (UNMIBH) 101 missions 102 peacekeepers 102, 103, 105, 108, 110, 134, 216 peacekeeping 93, 95, 97, 103, 105, 106, 111, 112 personnel 102, 107 pressure on Milosˇevic´ 30 Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP) 65–66 “protected areas” 95, 105 Protection Force (UNPROFOR) 11, 12, 15, 19, 20, 80, 94, 95–111, 113 Secretariat 104, 106 secretary general 99–101, 105, 108, 110–112 Security Council 93, 94, 95–99, 101, 103–110, 112, 126, 132, 134, 136, 149, 151, 156, 157–158, 165–179 Transnational Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) 94 troops 29 use of force 102 war crimes prosecutors 221 United States 14, 19, 20, 67, 77, 106, 125, 130, 131, 132, 150, 151, 156, 158, 169, 172, 177, 189, 190–191, 213, 217, 228, 234, 237, 240 Agency for International Development (USAID) 196 Air Force 213–216, 221 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 67, 217 Congress 83 Defense Department 68, 213 hegemony 77 Joint Chiefs of Staff 213, 217 Pentagon 219
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Quadrennial Defense Review (2001) 211 recognition of Bosnia 96 State Department 67, 229 UNPROFOR (see United Nations) uti possidetis juris 122–123, 128, 138 Vance, Cyrus 95, 130, 132, 232 Vance-Owen plan 13, 98–99 Vatican 228 Vattel, Emmerich 156 Verification Mission in Kosovo (see Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) Verification Mission over Kosovo (see North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Versailles 156 Vienna 158 Convention on the Law of Treaties 136 Vietnam 216–219 Vilnius 238 Visˇegrad 148 Voice of America (VOA) 78 Vojvodina 4, 6, 8, 125 von Clausewitz, Carl 159 Vukovar 10 Waltzer, Michael 221 war crime(s) 24, 99, 101, 149, 160, 233 war crimes tribunal 13 Warden, John 217, 219 war(s) anti- and postcolonial 25 civil 38 criminals 197–198 ethnic 38 irredentist 25 of colonial imperial expansion 25 of partition 28 of secession 25, 230–231 preemptive 151 Washington 67, 214, 215, 228 Washington Agreement 99
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Webster, Daniel 172 Weller, Mark 137 West European Union (WEU) 47, 97, 125 Western engagement in Balkans 230, 237 media 76 press 75 world 227–229, 234 Westphalian order 149, 152–153 Weyland, Otto P. 215 White House 217 World Bank (see International Bank of Reconstruction and Development) World War I 4, 6, 7, 9, 122, 156 World War II 30, 32, 101, 123, 147, 154, 156, 166, 169, 212–214, 229 Yiddish culture 28 Yugoslav army 46 breakup 24, 124 collapse 25, 217, 234, 236, 238 Commonwealth 42 communist leadership 39 community 232 conflict(s) 138, 147, 148, 150 Constitution of 1974 38, 129 crisis 42, 43, 46, 47, 48–49, 229 dismemberment 24 experiment 39 Federation 42, 43, 44–45, 46, 48 forces 135, 140, 174, 218 government 5, 175 imbroglio 148 kingdom 4 leadership 39, 40 National Army (JNA) 3, 9, 10, 12, 60, 95, 96, 102, 104, 125, 126, 129, 132, 147 overseas funds frozen 97 power grid 218 presidency 95, 231 question 51
republics 8, 11, 38, 40, 130, 134, 135 society 38 succession 149, 154 transition 45 union 9 war of dismantlement 29, 32, 230 wars 93, 119, 156 Yugoslavia 8, 14, 16, 18, 19, 30, 104, 112, 136–137, 174, 227 as balancer in Cold War 39 bombing campaign against 211, 216–217 collapse 7, 41, 44, 48, 55, 237 communist party 94 creation in 1918 3 disintegration of 4, 11, 26, 28, 123–124, 233 dissolution 59 economic decline 40 Federal Republic of (FRY) 97, 104, 121, 134–138, 140, 174–175, 191, 235 former 49, 51, 68, 77, 85, 94, 96, 97, 98, 101, 139, 147 fragmented demise 23 indebtedness 7 People’s Army 129 political death of 34 presidency 10 process of dissolution 43 Socialist Federal Republic of (SFRY) 6, 38, 124, 125–128, 133 territorial waters 97 war of secession 160 World War II 5 Zacher, Mark 119, 123 Zagreb 27, 28, 99, 125, 127, 231 Zaire 109 ˇ epa 13, 99–100 Z Zimmerman, Warren 130–131 Zolo, Danilo 156
