Tag: European Union
Filling Bosnia’s reform gaps
This USAID “gap analysis” for Bosnia and Herzegovina dropped into my inbox last week. I encourage those interested in the prospects for political and economic reform there to have a flip through the powerpoint slides. Bottom line: whatever the international community and the Bosnians have been doing about reform since 2006, it isn’t working.
There are likely several reasons for this. The ethnonationalist polarization of Bosnian politics intensified rapidly in 2006 after the rejection of the “April package” of constitutional amendments. Bosniak candidate for the presidency Haris Silajdzic amped up his rhetoric against Republika Srpska leader Milorad Dodik, who replied in kind. Both enjoyed political success as a result, though Dodik has last much longer and gotten much louder.
At about the same time, the European Union chose Christian Schwarz-Schilling as the international community’s High Representative responsible for ensuring implementation of the Dayton accords. Schwarz-Schilling was committed to lightening the touch of the Hirep and vowed not to use the dictatorial “Bonn powers” that had been bestowed on that office in 1997. This relieved a great deal of the pressure for reform and freed the country’s politicians to pursue their private interests at the expense of the state, as they would no longer find themselves summarily sacked for doing so.
The financial crisis of 2007/8 then took the wind out of the Bosnian economy’s sails. With growth slackening, the politicians found less cream to skim and naturally slowed the pace of reform even further, hoping to husband some state resources for their own benefit and to protect themselves from the electorate’s wrath at the reduced patronage benefits available. The corrupt and costly consequences of their behavior are well-documented. Corruption in Bosnia is not an aberration. It is the system, as Valery Perry has recently shown.
The question is: what should a foreign assistance organization like USAID do with its money in a situation like this?
Obviously not what it was doing before, which was grants to lots of widely scattered even if worthy projects. Nor, in my view, should it try to push reform by financing it. The money AID is likely to have in the future for Bosnia is nowhere near enough to convince a rational actor to undertake the kinds of reforms that are needed. Only the EU and the international financial institutions have that kind of money these days.
But conditionality and external pressure is not enough. The current Bosnian leaders won’t reform unless they feel some pressure not only from the international community but also from their own constituencies. One of the few reforms Bosnia has gotten right in recent years is its electoral system, which runs reasonably well. The problem has been that voters keep electing the same ethnonationalists who promise to protect them from other ethnonationalists. This mutual security dilemma keeps all three varieties in power, each for fear of the others.
Were I in charge, I would take all of the AID money and put it on a single objective: mounting a serious, sustained campaign across ethnic lines to unseat corrupt politicians and replace them with people committed to transparent and accountable governance, again across ethnic lines. The money might go to independent investigatory media, auditing bodies, judicial training, civil society organizations and thinktanks to support the kind of analysis and social mobilization required to unveil corrupt practices and hold perpetrators accountable.
The 2009 AID Anticorruption Assessment Handbook recommends pretty much that kind of program. In a country where “high-level figures collude to weaken political/economic competitors,” it suggests:
–seek gradual pluralization of political system with new competing groups emerging based on open, vigorous and broad-based economy
–build independence and professionalism in the bureaucracy, courts and legislative institutions.
There is a serious question whether an effort of this sort can be run out of an American embassy. Valery Perry thinks yes. I doubt it. American embassies have too many other urgent priorities to worry about the merely important. The latest is countering recruitment of foreign fighters, which has pretty much taken precedence in all countries with significant Muslim populations for the past year or two. Bosnia has contributed a more than proportionate number of fighters, so that priority is likely to crowd out most everything else.
Of course any ambassador worth her salt would want to know if the US government is funding a program of the sort I suggest and exercise oversight. But wisdom might dictate that it be conducted, transparently and accountably, through non-governmental channels. There are lots of American and non-American civil society organizations capable of such work. I hope they get the resources needed to make a real go of it.
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ISIS recruitment
On Thursday, the Middle East Institute and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies hosted ‘Recruiting for Jihad: The Allure of ISIS.’ Charles Lister, Resident Fellow at the Middle East Institute, Ahmet Sait Yayla, Terrorism and Radicalization Specialist and Chair of the Sociology Department at Harran University, Turkey, and Anne Speckhard, Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University and Director of the International Canter for the Study of Violent Extremism, all presented their thoughts on who ISIS attracts. Daniel Serwer, Professor of Conflict Management at Johns Hopkins SAIS and Scholar at the Middle East Institute, moderated.
Lister believes that every case is unique when it comes to who is recruited into ISIS. It recruits from all over. There is no single profile of a person most likely to join.Its strategies have been effective to the point where it is no longer only a regional terrorist organization, but a global one. In the past few years, ISIS has recruited about 50,000 people. The group now has a presence in countries in and around North Africa and the Middle East. ISIS has an unofficial presence in many other countries.
Lister attributes ISIS success in recruitment to five factors:
- Exploitation of chaos in Syria
- Military success
- Undermining of its rivals and adversaries
- Creation of a clear, alternative way of life
- Exploitation of media and social media
Though ISIS uses all these methods for radicalization, recruitment is most successful with personal contact, both over the Internet and in the privacy of homes. This makes forming effective counter-recruitment difficult.
Lister suggested several counters to ISIS recruitment. Fighting ISIS directly on the battlefield, targeting its leadership and finance, working more with rebel groups on the ground, and enhancing border surveillance are all ways to combat ISIS. Lister added that encouraging a safe space for a healthy, dynamic debate on sensitive issues will help in the fight against the Islamic State.
Yayla spoke mainly on the ISIS presence in Turkey and Turkish fighters that joined ISIS. Out of the 5,000 people from Turkey currently fighting with various groups within Syria, around 1,200 to 1,400 are working with ISIS. These people keep passing the Turkish-Syrian border. On the border, villages are close together, and many of the people directly across the border are friends and family. Villagers and the ISIS Turkish fighters know each other well and do what needs to be done for one another. Many of the people passing these borders are smuggling weapons and supplies.
For ISIS recruitment in Turkey, social media has a large impact. Facebook videos of Turkish ISIS and Jahbat al-Nusra fighters convince some to join the groups. They subtitle these videos in Turkish to appeal to the Turkish audience. Many Turkish recruits worked previously with al-Qaeda previously. They reach out to their close circles of friends in order to recruit. Criminals from Istanbul and Ankara are attracted to ISIS as they need money. ISIS provides $200/month stipends. Living on the streets in Turkey is much worse to these people than living a better life with ISIS in Syria.
Speckhard has interviewed terrorists, defectors, and family members of terrorists. She believes ISIS has been successful in recruitment because of four factors:
- Representation of an alternative world order
- Promotion of its ideology
- Some level of social support
- Individual vulnerability
Speckhard focused on the individual vulnerability to recruitment. Desires for revenge and prior trauma make people vulnerable. Those not in conflict zones watch videos of places like Iraq and want to be a part of something. Unemployment is a big factor in recruitment. Sexual rewards, as an ISIS fighter is given a wife, are also a motivation in joining. ISIS provides immediate satisfaction and relief. People are drawn to this.
ISIS provides an alternative to marginalization. Speckhard pressed for a civil rights movement and more effective integration, especially in Europe. The solution to marginalization will have to be legally enforced. She added that it is important to work with Turkey and support Greece going forward, in order to lessen the number of vulnerable people.
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Dear Hashim,
The Kosovo parliament yesterday elected Hashim Thaci President, to be inaugurated in April. Here is what I have to say to him today:
Congratulations! You have been privileged to lead the government for six years, including at independence, you have served more than a year as foreign minister, and now you will be chief of state. Not bad for a guy still under 50.
As you know all too well, such jobs come with responsibilities. They are like owning a boat: the first day and the last are the best.
For the next five years you face enormous challenges. The first is to heal the rift that your election has created in Kosovo’s polity. You won only on the third ballot and without opposition support. Parts of the opposition preferred to take to the streets and even to violence in an effort to derail, or at least diminish, your election.
I’ve got no sympathy whatsoever for the violence, which besmirches Kosovo more than you. That I am afraid is the purpose: the leadership of the violent protests opposes Kosovo statehood and wants instead to exercise the right of self-determination in order to join Albania, something that the Kosovo constitution prohibits. This is no less a threat to the state that you will represent than are the efforts by Belgrade to gain effective control over the Serb population of Kosovo. Both are anti-constitutional forces that will require a great deal of your attention and all the wisdom you can muster.
One of your greatest challenges will be to enlarge the sphere of moderate politics and transform these fringes of the Kosovo political space into something more like loyal oppositions. That will be enormously difficult, as the fringes despise each other even if they share a disdain for Kosovo’s statehood. Every move you make to be proper, fair and respectful to Serbs will find opposition among some Albanians. Any move you make to accommodate your Albanian critics will generate criticism in Belgrade. Your constitutional court’s wise guidance on implementation of the Association of Serb Municipalities should help on that especially contentious issue.
Even if it does, you will still face implacable opposition from part of your Albanian opposition, which not only loathes you personally but is also committed to ending the Belgrade/Pristina dialogue precisely because it helps to consolidate Kosovo as an independent and sovereign state. The best antidote will be the Kosovo state’s success in meeting the expectations of its people, many of whom are disappointed in the fruits of independence. There is far too much unemployment and underemployment, especially among young people.
I’d be the first to admit that the European economic recession is a primary factor in limiting Kosovo’s ability to provide jobs and prosperity to its own people. There is not a lot the Kosovo state can do to respond to that exogenous factor, especially since you wisely use the euro as your currency and therefore are unable to devalue. Nor is the president in charge of economic policy.
You can however do something about other factors that are shaping the public’s mood. Kosovo’s economic growth has in fact been relatively robust compared to Europe and the rest of the Balkans. Your citizens aren’t giving much credit for that because the benefits seem unfairly distributed. We have that problem in the United States too. In Kosovo, people believe nepotism, corruption and organized crime are the reasons. As president, you will need to set an example, as your predecessor has done, and insist on a level of probity, transparency and accountability that has too often been lacking, including in governments you have led.
The still pending European investigation of crimes committed against Serbs, Albanians and others after the Kosovo war will pose a particular problem for you. I imagine Brussels and Washington will continue to press for creation of a special court to try the accused. Because of the Marty report, which implied much but proved little, it is widely believed you may be among them. You will have to decide whether to use your new position to push ahead or to impede creation of the special court. You will also have to decide how to react if the Europeans bring an indictment against you personally.
Pristina’s relationship with Belgrade continues to fall short of what I would like to see. I believe it is important to convince Belgrade to recognize Kosovo’s sovereignty and territorial integrity sooner rather than later, if only by allowing Kosovo to become a member of the United Nations. This is not a big leap from the April 2013 political agreement that you negotiated, but it will require the same savvy diplomacy you employed as well as a lot of international community support, including from some of the European countries that don’t yet recognize Kosovo. International support will depend in large part on whether you are successful in convincing people that Kosovo is cleaning up its act, enforcing the rule of law and treating all its citizens equally.
Hashim: though strong politically within the governing coalition and your own political party, you are still a divisive figure domestically and an ambiguous one internationally. Your presidency will be an opportunity to overcome both defects. I know that won’t be easy. But I also know that you have demonstrated talents, ingenuity and determination that have served your country well in the past, both in war and peace. I wish you success in meeting the challenges ahead!
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Applying
A Facebook friend wondered over the weekend whether I was being skeptical or just superficial when I tweeted:
The one thing on which #Bosnia‘ns agree is that the country is not qualified for EU membership. So what do they do? Apply.
Skeptical was more like it. All you have to do to understand in depth why is take a glance at last year’s European Commission progress report on Bosnia and Herzegovina. Guess what? It shows little progress.
Brussels reads its own reports, so we can be sure the Europeans know that. The European Union remedy has been to push a “Reform Agenda” that starts with labor market reform. The reasoning is that only by lowering labor costs and increasing labor flexibility will Bosnian companies be able to compete effectively and expand in the future.
So far so good, but that is an indirect way of attacking Bosnia’s problems, which lie in a political economy that enriches politicians and impoverishes most of the population. I don’t say labor market reform won’t help, in particular if it reduces costs, increases competition and makes it harder for politicians to exploit patronage, but it is far from sufficient.
Bosnia needs prosecutions. The rip-offs are well-documented. It seems to me inconceivable that professional prosecutors would not have sufficient evidence. The international community should be able to help by tracing the tycoons’ finances and freezing ill-gotten gains. Precious little of that has been done.
The only really high-level prosecution these days is directed at an upstart politician, Fahrudin Radoncic, not for ripping off the state but rather for witness tampering in a Kosovo drug investigation. I don’t have any idea whether Radoncic is guilty or innocent (and he should be presumed the latter of course), but I am pretty sure that case will not do much to undermine the web of corruption and misappropriation of state assets that plagues Bosnia. The prosecutors’ use of wiretaps, however, demonstrates unequivocally that the judicial system in Bosnia has the means, but not the will, to attack other high-level corruption.
I’d be the first to admit that the United States suffers from high-level corrupt practices as well. A year doesn’t go by without charges against a governor here, a couple of members of Congress there, and dozens of state legislators, including in states far larger and with bigger economies than Bosnia. You need to be worried not when such cases are pursued but when they aren’t.
That’s the situation in Bosnia today. Despite a newly inked anti-corruption plan, the European Commission reports:
Organized crime cases in 2015 led to the confiscation of 550,000 euros. That’s peanuts. Hundreds of millions if not billions would be more like it.
If Bosnia and Herzegovina is serious about getting into the EU, it will need to skip confiscating the peanuts and trap the elephants. If the application for membership helps to mobilize the political will required, it’s all for the better. But it is far more likely to amount to nothing more than a maneuver to convince an already disheartened electorate that progress is being made.
Bosnia needs not only to apply to the EU, but also to apply itself to qualifying for membership.
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Russia’s new spheres of influence?
For the past 25 years, the main efforts deployed by the US and the West European allies aimed at supporting the democratization process in the fragile post-Soviet space. Adopting a balanced and efficient policy towards Russia was challenging and in many areas problematic. But never before has this ‘constructive engagement’ in the region been so strained, limited and difficult as it is today.
Russia’s ambitions in the ‘near abroad’ space, its recent violations of the international norms with regard to Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty and its air campaign in Syria are threatening the transatlantic democratic architecture. Recalibration of Washington’s relationship with Moscow shifts the entire geopolitical landscape of the region and beyond. The growing autocratic environment in Russia and its undemocratic, uncertain and offensive build-up to create a new spheres of influence requires a Western response.
By isolating, countering and blocking the Kremlin’s gains in the neighborhood we might affect its calculations and create momentum for a trajectory change. But by treating the symptoms we might forget to ultimately understand and address the underlying causes of this new crisis: Russian national identity and great-power ambitions in a multi-polar world.
On Monday, 22 Feb, the Conflict Management Department of SAIS, together with the Center for Transatlantic Relations and the Transatlantic Academy, will organize a half day conference in Kenney Auditorium (SAIS, Johns Hopkins) on Russia’s Foreign Policy: New Spheres of Influence?. Two panels, one on Europe and the other one on Middle East, will discuss the regional implications of Russia’s more assertive positioning.
The first panel, from 9:30 am to 11:00 am, will discuss Russian influence in Europe, and feature former US Ambassador John Herbst, EU Deputy Head of Delegation Caroline Vicini, German Marshall Fund Vice President Ivan Vejvoda and Dan Hamilton, CTR Executive Director. It will be moderated by Buzzfeed World editor Miriam Elder.
The second panel, from 11:30 am to 1:00 pm, will discuss the Middle East and feature Washington Institute for Near East Policy Fellow Anna Borshchevskaya, Transatlantic Academy Senior Fellow Marie Mendras, George Mason Professor Mark Katz and SAIS Conflict Management Program Director Daniel Serwer. It will be moderated by Christian Caryl, contributing editor of Foreign Policy magazine.
If you are interested to attend, please register at Russia’s Foreign Policy: New Spheres of Influence? Tickets, Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 9:00 AM | Eventbrite
The conference is on the record. You will be able to follow the talk on Twitter: #CMRussiaFP.
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Kosovo’s glass half full
Kosovo daily Koha Ditore asked questions. I responded, more or less on the even of the country’s February 17 independence day:
Q: How do you see the journey of Kosovo eight years after independence? Which are the achievements and failures of the state?
A: Kosovo has built a state with wide but not universal recognition that seeks to govern as a parliamentary democracy and interacts effectively with other countries, including those that don’t recognize its sovereignty and territorial integrity. I’ll leave to Kosovo’s citizens the privilege of judging the adequacy or inadequacy of the state in managing domestic affairs at the next election, but it seems to me internal security and the economy are vastly improved since 1999 and even since 2008.
Q: Kosovo independence continues to be challenged not only from abroad but also from within. Seven years after independence, Kosovo is not part of the UN and is not recognized by all EU members, while constitutionality is not yet extended to northern Kosovo, where the Serbs are the majority. Do you see improvement related these issues, in the near future?
A: I hope for improvements on these issues, but I really don’t know if it will happen in the near future. It is important to note that Belgrade has acknowledged the validity of the Kosovo constitution on its entire territory and will have to accept implementation of the Association of Serb Municipalities, for example, in accordance with the decision of the Kosovo constitutional court.
A main challenge from within are the political formations that don’t accept Kosovo’s constitution and statehood. They exist both among the Serbs and among the Albanians. The Kosovo state would be far strong if they abandon their hopes that Kosovo be taken over by Belgrade or Tirana.
The big international recognition issue in my view is Serbia’s non-recognition and blocking of Kosovo from UN membership. The Europeans have made it clear to Belgrade that its progress towards accession will depend on completely normalizing relations with Kosovo, which means at the very least UN membership and some sort of exchange of diplomatic representatives beyond liaison officers. I expect the next Serbian government to have to make some difficult decisions.
Q: After independence, the international community has assisted Kosovo in strengthening institutions by sending a mission responsible for Justice–EULEX. But this mission has been heavily criticized for no progress in fighting corruption and organized crime, as well in war crimes prosecutions. How do you evaluate the work of EULEX?
A: I don’t feel confident to evaluate EULEX, but I’ve long been convinced that success in fighting corruption and organized crime will require Kosovo’s citizens to take up the cudgels. Your press, civil society organizations, prosecutors, judges and government officials need to find the courage to confront those who are ripping off the country.
War crimes are different. It seems to me there the international community has a stronger role to play, through the Special Court once it is created. No Balkans country has yet found the capacity to deal adequately with its own war-time criminals, because they fought in a cause that most of the citizens supported. I won’t claim the US does a great job of prosecuting its own soldiers either. But for Kosovo bringing people to justice who committed atrocities against Serbs, Albanians and likely others is a necessary step in the state-formation process. I’d like to see parliament create a court that can get on with the job.
I also commend to interested readers Congressman Engel’s well-crafted piece on Keeping Kosova on the Path Toward Democracy.
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