SURVIVING THE PEACE The Struggle for Postwar Recovery in Bosnia-Herzegovina

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September 4, 2020
A book review; Corruption in the Prosecutorial Office; Corona update; Mladić's appeal; and more

Hello folks,

As the summer winds up, here's a bit of an overview with the latest on the corona epidemic in Bosnia; a fresh scandal involving the Chief Prosecutor; some migrant news; the Mladić appeal; and upcoming elections. But first, I'll mention a review of my book.

Book review by Marko Attila Hoare

In mid-August the scholar and Bosnia historian (among other things) Dr. Marko Hoare published the first (to my knowledge) serious review of my book. You can see it here. For the most part it is very positive, I'm glad to note. I'm just going to address a couple of points here.

One is the criticism that I should've included more background history on the 1992-1995 war. It's really hard for me to refrain from cracking wise about the idea of adding more material to a 470-odd pp text (with much respect to Dr. Hoare)! But as I explained to him, in fact I wrote some 250,000-odd words about the war—along with 300,000 more about the postwar period. That was my first draft.

One day on the radio I heard that Shakespeare had written a million words. Well, I wrote half a Shakespeare (referring to quantity, not quality). So for my second draft I selected the most critical background on the war, slashed much other text (from both the wartime and postwar periods) and ended up with somewhere around 200,000 words—still too long for a non-academic book. Since my name is not William Shakespeare, nor Stephen King—not even the oft-published Marko Hoare, I didn't feel that I should dare lengthen the book.

Dr. Hoare's not the only person who wanted more background. I'm sorry. People, for more background on the war, see my bibliography; read Death of a Nation; read things by Hoare, Marko.

And for that matter, I'm glad I didn't include more about the war, because I was not there for most of it, and there are people whose specialty was the war, while mine was not. It's really a good idea not to write about things that aren't your expertise.

One more response to Dr. Hoare's comments: While he approved of my last section on war crimes denial and revisionism, he wrote, "... thematically it does not have a lot to do with the principal subject matter of the book." From one angle, you can see that the discussion of revisionism looks tangential to my main subject, postwar grassroots human rights campaigns. And I should note that Dr. Hoare's work on revisionism has been some of the most incisive, comprehensive, and essential material on that subject.

On the other hand, over the years I came to realize that fighting against the dishonesty of the genocide-deniers and other revisionists is a critical, necessarily ongoing work. Seeing the impact of my brother Roger's continuing maintenance of the Balkan Witness web site over more than twenty years helped me understand the importance of this work. In its own sense, fighting the deniers is an important human rights endeavor, because the revisionists' denial of war crimes and atrocities works to erase the history of genocide and territorial aggression. This promotion of historical amnesia and, in effect, justification of the war crimes, constitutes a grave insult to the survivors and the bereaved. It is out of respect for them and their representatives, the grassroots activists of Bosnia-Herzegovina, that I included the section on denial.

Yet another scandal in the Prosecutorial Office

Once a young activist from Prijedor told me, “These days, nationalism is only for the little people. The big politicians are just criminals; corruption is their real work.”

And when you read the Bosnian newspapers you see that there's news of a scandal every day of the year. Those are the small scandals. The big scandal is that Bosnia-Herzegovina is run by criminals; the daily news is proof of that.

Thus in mid-August the Sarajevo daily "Oslobodjenje" published information showing that Gordana Tadić, Chief Prosecutor of the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia-Herzegovina, had made a fraudulent claim for compensation for what is called "separated living." State officials are permitted to receive payment above their salary when they are compelled to live away from home for some siginificant period. This applies to many members of Parliament, for example, if they are working in the capital, Sarajevo, but their home and family are in Banja Luka or somewhere else in the country.

Documentation provided by Oslobodjenje and the online magazine "Žurnal" shows that Tadić presented a request to the state for compensation for accommodations for a period when she did not live in the apartment in question. She had lived in the apartment for a time before this period and was duly compensated for that expense. But evidence came out that she was no longer a tenant of the apartment after February 2019, when the property was sold to a new owner. However, Tadić requested further compensation for accommodation, all the way up to February of this year!

When the information about the fraudulent claim was published, Tadić threatened to sue Oslobodjenje and Avdo Avdić, the reporter from Žurnal. It appears that Tadić is a litigious sort, as this is by far not the first time she has sued for defamation. However, she used official e-mail and the website of the Prosecutorial Office to convey her threat, thus violating the separation of official matters from private affairs. This is the case because a lawsuit for libel is not the business of the state office, which has no jurisdiction to act on behalf of one of its employees in a civil claim. Thus Tadić compounded scandal upon scandal, earning severe criticism from media representatives for intimidation.

Meanwhile, Tadić received the support of the main media outlet of the Serb-controlled Republika Srpska, RTRS (Radio-Television RS), as well as from the highest national (non-party) organization of Bosnian Croats, the Hrvatski narodni sabor (Croatian National Assembly). Why? Because Tadić is cozy with the corrupt operators at the heights of the Serb and Croat leadership.

Backing up just a little, I submit that the business of the chief prosecutor is to ignore or shelve evidence of serious criminal behavior of the country's highest leaders. Gordana Tadić became acting chief prosecutor in 2016 after her predecessor, Goran Salihović, was removed from office for failure to pursue allegations of criminal behavior on the part of Milorad Dodik. (Note also that not one Chief Prosecutor has ever served out a complete mandate.) Tadić worked as acting chief until the beginning of 2019, when the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council installed her as Chief Prosecutor.

Oh yes, the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council, which is headed by Milan Tegeltija. If you've been reading my reports since before I initiated this blog, you'll remember that last year I wrote about the scandal Mr. Tegeltija was involved in—click here for a refresher. There, I wrote how the Velika Kladuša businessman Nermin Alešević surreptitiously filmed Tegeltija promising to use his influence illegally to forward a claim by Alešević.

Release of a widely-viewed video of Tegeltija making his promise  of illegal influence created quite a stir in the public—and then the case went nowhere, ignored to death by Tadić at the helm of the Prosecutorial Office. No, that's not quite accurate. The prosecutors did act, freezing Alešević's request for immunity and are threatening to prosecute him for "unauthorized recording."

That's one favor Tadić has done for Tegeltija and, by extension, for his patron Milorad Dodik. Meanwhile, she has also stalled pursuit of the "Diploma scandal," where the journalist Avdo Avdić revealed that in two weeks you could purchase a diploma showing that you had graduated from high school. Here, Tadić did a favor for some Croat operators who were at the center of the scam. And also meanwhile, do we see any pursuit of the high-level Bosniak officials (Fadil Novalić, e.g.) who participated in the kickback scam for Chinese ventilators, costing the public 10.5 million KM? No. (See my June blog entry for background on that operation.)

It seems appropriate to me that Vildana Selimbegović, chief editor of Oslobodjenje, called the Bosnian judiciary a "cancerous wound on the entire society."

Now a Parliamentary investigative committee has summoned Tadić to explain her fraudulent request for compensation for accommodations for most of 2019. Will there be results? I'm not holding my breath.

Corona Update

The total death rate in Bosnia-Herzegovina to date is 639, with about 21,000 detected cases of infection. The official population of BiH is just over 3,275,000, but the actual population is probably well under 3 million. Compare this with King County (Seattle, Washington) with a population of right around 2.25 million. Here, the infection count is just under 20,000, with about 750 deaths.

The infection rate continues to rise and fall in Bosnia, as elsewhere, with clusters forming in different places, and then hotspots moving on. Sarajevo presently reports a fall in the number of infections. In that Canton, school is starting up with reduced hours and masks required. On-line studies are being established in many cases. The measures have an experimental feel to them, and may be changed in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, Milorad Dodik announced that he is going to travel to Russia to make arrangements for delivery of a vaccine to the RS. The Russian vaccine has gone through two preliminary testing phases; it appears that the obligatory third phase of testing will involve masses of Russian human guinea pigs. And there's no promise when the RS will receive the vaccine, as Russia will give priority to its 144-odd million population. Dodik says, "We will get the vaccine, and whoever wants to use it can do so, but whoever does not want to use it, does not have to." On the Federation side, the Ministry of Health announced that, in cooperation with the World Health Organization, it is going to acquire 800,000 vaccines. Further information about the timing and origin of the vaccines is not yet available.

Elections

This is the year for nationwide municipal elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina. They have been pushed back a month to November 15 because of the coronavirus epidemic. But rival candidates are already jockeying into place as the numerous political parties form coalitions and start sniping, rhetorically, at each other. There are 2,868 registered candidates for positions in 105 municipalities and cities of Bosnia, plus the District of Brčko.

In Sarajevo there's a more or less leftist coalition including Naša Stranka and the SDP, facing off with the Muslim nationalist SDA and its satellites and spinoffs. Other parties such as the SBB and DF have some weight, and pretty much all of them continue to replicate the old authoritarian model from the Tito era (though on a smaller scale) that bases an organization around the personality and power of one man.

In Srebrenica, the Serb genocide denier Mladen Grujičić will run for a second term as mayor. The first Serb mayor of Srebrenica since the end of the war, Grujičić was elected in 2016 as a result of better organization among the Serbs than among the "pro-Bosnian," i.e., non-genocide denying parties. The better part of the superior organization among the Serbs involved bringing in citizens of Serbia to pretend to be Bosnians and vote for Grujičić. (For more on this episode see my article here and read about it in my book.)

Here I want to quote at length one of my all-time favorite Bosnian commentators, the columnist Gojko Berić, on the general situation leading up to the elections. He writes, "The nationalists have so fundamentally disintegrated this country that the Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats have never in the last century been so institutionally divided as they are today. It is possible for the country to fall apart—but there's nothing left to fall apart.

"It seems that at this moment BiH is somehow closest to the vision that Alija Izetbegović had. He saw the country as a territorially whole and sovereign state with three ethnically and religiously divided societies, along with several percentages of minorities, wherein each society would be run by 'their own' people. According to his thoughts, power among the Bosniaks would be held by several of the most prominent Bosniak families."

The big news of this year is that new municipal elections will finally be held in Mostar, scheduled for December—for the first time since 2008! Without going inordinately into details, after that time, the divided city was not able to agree on principles of representation. No deal was arranged until this year; thus a Croat acting mayor, Ljubo Bešlić, ran the city—but in cahoots with the Muslim nationalist SDA. This was comfortable enough for these two power-brokers to maintain the situation for these 12 years.

Nothing else was maintained, however. Berić was referring to Mostar, among other things, when he said that everything had fallen apart. In Mostar the city garbage dumps were leaking hazardous waste into the neighborhoods; protests were to no avail. The drainage system was not maintained, so every stronger rain brought flooding in the streets. Green belts were neglected and not replanted. Urban planning in general fell by the wayside; roads were not repaired, nor were war-damaged streets renewed at a reasonable tempo. Illegal construction by profiteers has been rife.

The comment by analysts has been that Mostar needs leadership, not cronyist operators, to run the city. There's a Bosniak coalition preparing to run a candidate for mayor. It is headed, again, by the SDA. The SDP and Naša Stranka have declined to join that coalition, saying that "it has nothing of Mostar, nothing of civic awareness, only the most primitive personal interest at heart."

Gojko Berić terms the contest for Mostar "to be or not to be." He writes, "The problem is not so much in the division at hand, as much as in the fatalistic outlook on the upcoming Bosniak-Croat electoral battle. If the city comes to be led by a Bosnian-Herzegovinan mayor, the HDZ (Croat nationalist party) will never return. Mostar will forever be the capital of Herzegovina, and not the Croat capital. But if Čović (HDZ leader) wins now, then Mostar will remain in the clutches of the HDZ for the long term.

Mladić's Appeal

The defense and prosecution arguments in the appeal phase of convicted war criminal General Ratko Mladić took place at The Hague on August 25 and 26, under the auspices of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT), the successor to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Mladić was Chief of Staff of the RS army during the war and, as such, oversaw the siege of Sarajevo, the genocide at Srebrenica, and numerous other war crimes. On the (mostly comfortable) lam since 1996, he was apprehended in 2011 and convicted in a first-instance trial at the ICTY in 2017. He was found guilty of genocide at Srebrenica and all other charges against him except for a first count of genocide pertaining to six other municipalities (notably including Prijedor), and sentenced to life in prison.

Prosecutors wished to see conviction for the first count of genocide, which would be extremely significant, especially to the survivors and to those of us who believe that Srebrenica was only one of many facets of the genocide that began early on during the war. On the other side. Mladić and his supporters wish to see a complete acquittal. During the hearing, his lawyers asserted that the charges against him were "made out of thin air."

They also asserted that he was no longer mentally fit to stand trial, so that an appeal could end up being a "miscarriage of justice." According to people who watched footage of the proceedings, this assertion was belied by the fact that Mladić was seen to be paying close attention and, periodically interrupting and contradicting his own lawyer, Dragan Ivetić. In any case, the court authorities had systematically rejected Mladić's regular demands for further postponement of his appeal or for medical release.

During the proceedings, among other claims, the defense asserted that the RS army's operations around Srebrenica were “a legitimate military operation, that a large number of Bosniaks were killed in legitimate attacks on a column through the forest, and that Mladic did not know of any plan to kill able-bodied men."

On the other side, Mladić's crimes were called "amongst the most heinous known to humankind," and Mladić characterized as "the epitome of evil."

Mladić was given ten minutes of the end of the appeal to make his own statement, during which he said, "I defended my country and my people," he said. Presiding judge Nyambe cut him off when he surpassed the ten-minute mark.

The decision on the appeal will be rendered sometime in 2021.

Migrants

The crisis of migrants coming into Bosnia-Herzegovina with the hopes of getting through the country into a more orderly and promising part of Europe continues. At present there are some 3,000 migrants stuck in camps in the northwestern part of the country—Uno-Sanski Kanton (USK) around Bihać and Velika Kladuša, and another 7,000 out in the open or in derelict buildings in the same area.

The gathering of stranded migrants has been stressful for local and national authorities; for local citizens; and most of all, naturally, for the migrants themselves. Although some 60,000 have already passed into Croatia and further into Europe, conditions have been dreadful for those stuck in Bosnia, and they continue to get worse. Around 150 new migrants are arriving daily into USK, with another 50 or so being turned back from the border by Croatian police, usually brutalized.

There have been increasing stories of violence against and among migrants, not only in USK but also in Sarajevo and other parts, with people getting involved in knife fights and worse.

Here's what my friend Elissa writes: "Local vigilantes are attacking migrants and those who help them, but so are the police, and it's the local officials who are creating an impossible situation, which makes things worse for the local population, too. They don't let migrants and refugees, now even families, into the official camps (only some of which are full) and now they dump people on the entity border where they are trapped without food or shelter. This trying to prevent migrants from entering the canton has been going on for 2 years but the latest moves mean they have no way to move on. (Only local volunteers are offering any food or shelter!)"

Migrants have always especially been shunned in the RS. If they arrive there, for example coming across the Drina River from Serbia, they are quickly picked up and removed to the Federation. Recently authorities in USK declared a prohibition against any transporting of migrants to that Canton or within it, in the futile hope of preventing more influx. This technically pertains to the trafficking of migrants by RS authorities, who bring them to the border with the Federation.

Milorad Dodik recently said that the RS was not going to honor that prohibition, and that it was going to continue to remove migrants from the entity. If they arrive in Bijeljina in the east, they will be bussed all the way across the entity to the border with the USK. Dodik stated, "We gather then, and then take them where they wish to go."

And when the migrants are dropped at the inter-entity border, often the USK authorities try to turn them back, leaving them stuck in "no-mans' land." Recently, for a short time, stranded migrants created a blockade on part of the main road into the Canton, to no avail.

Two of the main state-run camps in USK—Miral and Bira—are being phased out,  leaving the main one, Lipa, which is located in an isolated spot.

None of this leads to any kind of solution, because that would require coordination and good will from the top—at least from the authorities in the Federation—as well as from the international community. Both sides have utterly failed to help with this true humanitarian catastrophe.
(For more on this problem see my previous entries in this blog, as well as my reports in the Balkan Witness page here.)

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