Tag: Balkans

Time for one person, one vote?

Q:  Is the US stepping in Bosnia again with the aim to fix it? [Assistant Secretary of State] Victoria Nuland recently talked ab0ut it.

A:  I’ve heard a lot of rumbling, but I have not heard a clear plan. The only kind of plan that will work is one that mobilizes at least a few of the Europeans as well. See With Europeans, not without them | peacefare.net.

Q:  How do you see attempts to implement Sejdic – Finci verdict?

A:  I’m a simple guy. The first solution I think of is one president, no ethnic or territorial restrictions. As there will always be more than one Bosniak candidate, in order to win, there would be a strong incentive to assemble a cross-ethnic coalition. That would be good. What’s wrong with that? If you don’t like it, try one president and two vice presidents, elected as a package. No ethnic or territorial restrictions. Two rounds of voting. Or elect the president in parliament if you prefer.

Q:  The negotiations with the EU representatives are going for sometime. Is it going nowhere? Read more

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Kosovo enjoys micro regime changes

Petrit Selimi, serving as deputy foreign minister of Kosovo and a member of the General Council of the PDK, offers these reflections on Sunday’s second turn municipal election results, the first held on the entire territory of Kosovo under Pristina’s authority since independence (now graced with a few edits):

Kosovo just went through one of the most positive episodes of its’ young democracy. Local elections were organized for the fourth time since the war of 1999 but these elections felt like a new beginning in more than one way.

Those following Balkan politics got plenty of fascinating news from Kosovo this Sunday.

The second round of the local elections took place for the first time in the entire territory of Kosovo. The first round was held on November 3  but many candidates, including in all the biggest cities, failed to pass 50% threshold in the first round.  Hence the second round mattered more then usually. Read more

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With Europeans, not without them

Kati Marton, Dick Holbrooke’s wife, called yesterday for revivified American diplomacy aimed at preventing Bosnia from flying apart.  She is right to be worried.  But calls for engagement need something substantial to back them up.  That was her husband’s great virtue:  he was able to push all the levers of American power in the same direction at the same time, marrying power to engagement.

It is hard to know what that would mean today.  The military lever, as Ms Marton acknowledges, is simply not available.  American economic leverage in Bosnia is minimal.  Our aid is mis-directed, trade is negligible, and investment is nonexistent. Our oversized embassy–it has many times the staff it had during the war, when I was its most frequent visitor–sponsors biotechnology seminars, boasts a donation of $533,000 for of anti-smuggling equipment and is still featuring the last ambassador’s July 4 farewell its website.  Last year’s embassy effort to produce reform in the Bosnian Federation–the 51% of the country in which power is shared principally between Croats and Muslims–has come to nothing.

Nor is it clear why Bosnia should be an American responsibility.  The fact is the United States never had vital national security interests in Bosnia.  What it had was a dominant geopolitical position–the 90s were the unipolar moment–and very few challengers.  Washington could, if it felt like it, devote its military, diplomatic and economic weight to ending the genocidal realities of Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.  It no longer has that luxury.  It faces similar atrocities in Syria but has chosen to focus its attention on chemical weapons that have killed relatively few but represent a serious threat to a valued international norm.  Other priorities–the Iranian nuclear program, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, China’s military challenge in the Pacific and America’s own economic ailments–take priority.

Kati Marton discounts Europe’s role in Bosnia, misidentifying the “High Representative” as its agent.  Though an Austrian who knows a great deal about Bosnia, he is the agent of both the Americans and the Europeans.  The European Union representative is someone else.  The EU has a lot of what America lacks:  aid, trade and investment as well as good reason to be concerned, since renewed instability in Bosnia would bring increased refugee flows and substantial financial burdens.

The only way for Washington to be effective in Bosnia today is with the Europeans, not without them.  But most of Europe is indifferent and unconcerned.  The most directly interested are Croatia, which shares a long border with Bosnia and is now the EU’s 28th member, and Germany, which played an important role supporting US efforts in the 1990s and now wields the biggest stick in Europe.  Chancellor Angela Merkel showed what she could do with a bit of clarity and a few choice words in Kosovo, where she has compelled Serbia to accept the validity of Kosovo’s constitutional framework on its entire territory. 

Washington, Zagreb and Berlin are the winning formula.  If you want to get something done today in Bosnia, Zagreb is vital to delivering the Bosnian Croats.  Berlin has clout with both the Croats and the Bosnian Serbs (largely through Belgrade).  And the Americans, as in the past, need to deliver the Bosniaks (those are the people Western newspapers call Bosnian Muslims).  A concerted Croatian/German/American initiative would drag the entire EU in the right direction and prove irresistible to all the Bosnians.

But even that won’t work unless we find serious allies within Bosnia.  They have proved elusive.  Milorad Dodik, once the darling of the West, has embraced vigorous Serb nationalism and is now the most serious threat to Bosnia’s unity.  Zlatko Lagumdzija, who once aimed at creating a cross-ethnic coalition, has failed.  Croats who would prefer a more united Bosnia that could move quickly towards EU membership just don’t have enough votes.

This is where strategic patience comes in.  Washington, Zagreb and Berlin should make it clear what they want the Bosnians to do.  They should prepare a short list—three to five reasonable items focused mainly on constitutional reform would be my preference—and then be prepared to await the Bosnian response, cutting American and EU assistance regularly if there is none. The Americans should shrink their embassy in Sarajevo dramatically.  The Europeans should get rid of their bilateral embassies altogether, relying on the EU representative to speak with a single voice. 

What about the 26 other members of the EU?  A few of them like the UK and the Netherlands, will back a well-crafted tripartite initiative.  The rest really cannot be helpful in this situation.  They should stand aside, as all but Germany did at Dayton, and let the key players use their clout.  They will be rewarded by saving on embassies in Sarajevo and by enjoying the spectacle of others doing the heavy lifting.  Their finance ministries will be grateful.   

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People to be thankful for

My friends get in trouble a lot.  At the moment, I’m concerned in particular about Ahmed Maher, an Egyptian activist in the April 6 Movement for whom an arrest warrant has been issued because he defied the government’s latest law on demonstrations, which went into effect this week.  He already faces other charges related to previous demonstrations.  And I’m concerned about Sonja Biserko, who is being criticized for agreeing to testify on behalf of Croatia to support its charge of genocide against Serbia at the International Court of Justice.  In Belgrade, where Sonja has lived most of her life, she is accused of being a traitor.

Ahmed was in DC just two weeks ago, when he spoke at the Middle East Institute conference and chatted with some of us privately.  He is determined to create space in Egypt for a “third force,” which would occupy the political space between the current military-backed government and the Muslim Brotherhood, now the object of repression but itself intolerant and anti-democratic when it held power for a year, ending last summer.  Ahmed’s third force would be committed to human rights, a civil state based on citizenship, and democratic ideals.  It has been precisely the lack of support for these ideals that has made the Egyptian revolution such a roller coaster ride.

Ahmed doesn’t expect real success for another ten years or so, which makes his willingness to keep democratic hopes alive now particularly striking.  He is trying to maintain a space for political dissent in Egypt, despite the restoration of military authority.  This will not be easy.  Egypt’s army quickly accuses dissenters of being terrorists, or supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, against which Ahmed also took to the streets.  Now he defends their political rights.  Egypt’s restored military regime does not take that kindly.

Sonja is in a different, but no less problematic, situation.  Serbia today is a democracy, more or less.  So far as I can tell, its government is refusing to comment on her willingness to testify against it at The Hague, but Serbia’s press is condemning her (this is from Novosti last Saturday):

This is one of rare, if not the unique, examples in modern history of a person taking the stand against his or her own state by proclaiming it genocidal. Should the trial take place – meaning should the two sides refuse to withdraw charges – Sonja Biserko would be responsible for war damages citizens of Serbia would have to compensate Croatia that had expelled and plundered 450,000 Serbs in 1990s. What’s even worse, the title of the genocidal state would be forced on Serbs who had sided with the Allies in WWI and WWII. And all that in favor of the country that allied itself with fascists and left a legacy of Jasenovac and other concentration camps in which Serbs in the first place have been systematically eradicated; Serbs against whom a proved genocide was committed, the genocide that for the sake of brotherhood, unity and peace has always been swept under the carpet in SFR of Yugoslavia.

Serbia’s own homicidal record in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s of course goes unmentioned.  That too is one of Sonja’s sins:  she mentions it all the time.

Sonja too was in Washington recently, as a member of a UN-commissioned group looking into human rights violations in North Korea.  The long-time chair of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, like Ahmed she is a well-known figure abroad.  Both of them will enjoy some measure of international attention, as well as whatever limited protection that may bring.  And if they decide to flee, even temporarily, they will find haven in any number of Western countries where they are known.

People committed to nonviolence like Ahmed and Sonja are trying to assert their rights, not incite violence.  Many can’t flee, and most don’t want to.  What they want is to be able to speak their minds freely, no matter how unpopular–or distasteful to those in power–their views may be.  I am grateful for all of them this Thanksgiving, including those with whom I don’t agree.  May you be safe, and may those of us who enjoy freedom be prepared to protect your rights as best we can!

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Crackdown, but not too far

Milan Marinković writes from Niš:

Serb extremist attacks on three polling stations in the northern part of Kosovo during the recent first round of local elections, along with an already steady increase in drug-related violence and crime in Serbia, have made Serbian prime minister Ivica Dačić and his deputy Aleksandar Vučić announce a “historically unprecedented” crackdown.  Their focus is on football hooliganism and far right political extremism – both of which have close ties with illegal activity in northern Kosovo, as well as with each other.  According to recent media revelations, a growing number of Serbian football hooligans and ultranationalists are joining the influential international neo-Nazi organization “Combat 18,” originally founded in the UK.

Rhetorical determination notwithstanding, the government is highly unlikely to launch a full-scale war against the country’s most powerful criminal organizations due to the palpable security risks, compounded by organized crime’s penetration of vital state institutions.  Police departments – and in some cases even parts of police departments – have been fighting among themselves.  There has also been a series of incidents and crimes committed in a relatively short time period by members of the elite police unit, Gendarmerie. The Gendarmerie is of particular concern because it is beyond doubt the strongest armed force within the entire security sector in terms of training, equipment and overall combat capability. Read more

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The real deal

While I’m posting intereviews, I’ll put this one up too.  I did it for Marin Dushev, who writes for the Bulgarian weekly Capital, last week.  But far better than reading me is reading Kurt Basseuner and Bodo Weber’s Not Yet a Done Deal:  Kosovo and the Prishtina-Belgrade Agreement.  They are right about many things, but most important of all that “normalization of relations” means mutual recognition and exchange of ambassadors, which will have to occur before Serbia enters the European Union.

Q:  Belgrade is considered to have been strongly interested in high turnout among Serbs in the North because of the expected beginning of negotiations with the EU in January. And it seems that the Serbian government was pretty active in persuading the local Serbs to vote. But still the turnout in the North seems to have been relatively low. How can we explain it? Did Belgrade use all its leverage in the North to convince or even pressure the people to vote or did they underestimate the strength of the opposition towards the agreement? Read more

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