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Time to concede defeat in Bosnia-Herzegovina
William Pfaff IHT
Thursday, October 10, 2002
The Dayton accords
PARIS The electoral victory of nationalists last Saturday in
Bosnia-Herzegovina
suggests that it is time for the international community to make a
serious re-examination
of what is happening in that country, and of what eventual outcomes
can reasonably be
expected.
The Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina is an artificial state improvised
at the Dayton
negotiations of 1995. It was imposed on the people of that unhappy
country under
American and NATO pressures, to stop interethnic slaughter.
Three years of ghastly fratricidal war had followed
Bosnia-Herzegovina's declaration of
independence in April 1992, following a referendum boycotted by the
Serbs of Bosnia.
This was a new step in the dismantlement of Yugoslavia, inspired by
Slobodan
Milosevic's program to create a "Greater Serbia" at the expense of
Croatia and Bosnia.
Fighting immediately broke out, mainly instigated by the Serbian and
Croatian
communities bent on creating ethnically "pure" territories, with a
view to union,
respectively, with Serbia and with a newly independent Croatia.
The Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina were the group that suffered most,
but a major
purpose of the attack was also to destroy cosmopolitan Sarajevo, a
multiethnic city that
was a center of liberal and tolerant political and cultural values.
The siege of Sarajevo, and the ethnic cleansing that took place
during the Serbian
attempt to gain domination of the city and its region, provided the
most appalling violence
Europe had experienced since World War II.
The European nations' irresolution and impotence in the face of this
crisis seemed a
frightening augury concerning the future of the European Union. The
doubts then
inspired about "Europe" have yet to be entirely dissipated.
When the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
eventually
intervened, in the summer of 1995, all of the parties were convoked
to the U.S. Air
Force base at Dayton, Ohio, where, sequestered, and under intense
pressures, they were
made to accept unwanted compromises.
Bosnia-Herzegovina was divided into a Serbian republic composed of
49 percent of its
territory, with an uneasy Croatian-Muslim Federation occupying 51
percent.
A central government with members from the three groups was
established, with modest
responsibilities under UN and subsequent NATO supervision. That
supervision was
politically timid and failed to pursue war criminals or give
energetic support to reform.
Despite billions in international aid, the new state has not been a
success. Living
standards are low, the economy feeble, the unemployment level 60
percent. This has
accelerated emigration of the young, mobile and talented. The
country is being drained of
its future.
Last Saturday's elections for the multiethnic presidency, the
legislature and the cantonal
governments, were the first organized by the Bosnian authorities
themselves since the
war ended. With a low electoral turnout (55 percent), and final
results yet to be
announced, the three individuals apparently elected to the collegial
presidency all
represent the nationalist parties. A similar outcome seems apparent
in the other votes.
Compromises and coalitions will be necessary before the final
complexion of the
government becomes clear, but liberal, secular and multiethnic
forces have lost. It now
seems necessary for the international community to admit that the
Dayton solution was
not a solution. It was a way to end a war. It did not provide the
foundation for a modern
state. It did not offer a structure conducive to national
reconciliation. It may be that the
constructive response now is simply to concede the failure, to
concede to the nationalists
what the international community was mobilized to deny them.
Accepting the fact that Bosnia-Herzegovina has, for practical
purposes, already been
ethnically cleansed, and accepting the consequences, now may be the
only way to
terminate this part of the problem of Yugoslav succession.
This would mean the Republika Srpska's union with Serbia; union of
the Croatian
territories of the Croat-Muslim Federation with Croatia; and the
Muslim territories made
into a new state centered on Sarajevo, possibly as an
internationalized city-state, with
guarantees, possibly as an independent republic.
The Serbian and Croatian nationalists would be politically disarmed,
and would disappear
into the larger communities to which they fought to belong -
societies that now have been
through the transition to democracy or are well on that road.
Nationalist and integrist forces inside the new Muslim identity
would survive, part of a
community dominated by traditionally cosmopolitan Sarajevo. On the
other hand, Muslim
integrist forces in Albania and Kosovo might be strengthened and
given new ambitions.
This certainly is not a solution the international community has
wanted, nor the surviving
liberal forces inside today's Bosnia-Herzegovina. It amounts to a
defeat for those forces.
But the defeat is to a political artifice with a dim future.
Democratic values may better
prosper if Bosnia-Herzegovina is partitioned once again. Realism
demands that this be
discussed.
International Herald Tribune Los Angeles Times Syndicate
International
Serbian News Network - SNN
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.antic.org/
