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

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November-December, 2020
December, 2020

The Dayton agreement on its 25th anniversary

The last couple of months of 2020 were the 25th anniversary of the Dayton agreement, drafted in Ohio in November, and signed in Paris the next month. In observance of this round anniversary. commentators by the dozens have described the agreement, the constitution contained therein, and the chaotic, dysfunctional state that has resulted.

In that vein, I wrote the  essay below for the Society for Threatened Peoples (Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker) based in Göttingen, Germany. The Society used part of this in a report comprising the statements of a half-dozen analysts which you can read here—but only in German.

My criticism is not very different in spirit than the many other anniversary statements I have seen. But Oslobodjenje columnist Gojko Berić had something worthwhile to say on the subject, which I will insert at the end.

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If the European Union and the international community at large are to help Bosnia-Herzegovina, leaders must focus their attention, re-affirm "European values," and implement measures that make a difference. Otherwise, the only thing Europe has to offer Bosnia is chaos.

In the immediate postwar years. the international community was able to offer not only significant material assistance to Bosnia, but also moral and political inspiration. The phrase "going to Europe," that is, joining the EU, was felt to be nearly synonymous with going to heaven.

This was the perception, in spite of Bosnia getting off on the wrong foot with the calamitous political structure enshrined in Dayton. The Dayton Constitution (Article IV) emphasized collective identity and ethnic politics to the detriment of individual rights and citizen-based politics. It defined citizens as members of an ethnicity rather than as individuals with equal rights. It thereby cemented ethnic divisions, leaving power in the hands of those who were able to exploit and profit from those divisions.

The international community had the power to mobilize against the dysfunctionality caused by the very document that it had approved, and international officials provided Bosnia hope for improvement for about the first decade after the war. Then, extreme nationalism and separatism made a comeback, just as the international community was losing its focus, distracted by other conflicts worldwide and by internal tensions in Europe.

Around this time international officials switched their strategy from active intervention in Bosnia to one of "domestic ownership," which was tantamount to leaving the foxes to guard the chicken coop. The idea that a corrupt domestic political structure was going to cut short its own racketeering and nepotism in order to build an egalitarian nation with prosperity for all was in no sense realistic.

That strategy didn't work and, on the 25th anniversary of Dayton, it is time for international officials to start over and adopt a robust plan of action that will help decent, positive-minded Bosnians—and they are the majority—throw out their dishonest leaders and create a functioning state that has hope to join the community of thriving nations.

Leaders of the international community, from the High Representative on down, have shown that they have a clear understanding of the ills of the Bosnian system. They regularly issue evaluations that accurately acknowledge that the state they have supported is dysfunctional, and they admit that they put their trust in nationalist leaders who have only intensified divisiveness (see "Bosnia and Herzegovina: Some politicians still ignore ‘core European values’ 25 years after peace deal" here.)

Seeing such accurate evaluations from international officials, one wonders, "Do they think that making such pronouncements is their only job?"

It is time for international officials who speak of "European values" to re-focus and to clarify what those values are. That would be a good starting point to relaunch a robust approach to Bosnia. Those values—and they are, in fact, universal values—should be articulated as including, at the very least, egalitarian civil status and honesty in government.

From this starting point the international community must use its neglected but formidable economic and political leverage to put a stop to the profiteering, divisiveness, and separatism that have reigned in Bosnia-Herzegovina ever since the Dayton agreement was signed.

Pressure on the entrenched, profiteering leadership of Bosnia can be applied from above and below. From above, dishonest domestic officials must be sidelined: either removed altogether, or shown clearly that it is a new day and that they are unequivocally expected to lead their country toward unity and functionality.

And from below, there are numerous grassroots organizations, clear-thinking local leaders, and some helpful non-governmental organizations that should be encouraged and materially supported. Their role must be recognized as essential to the healing and recovery of the country. The international community can do its job better by finding honest and capable leadership at the local level, among the grassroots, rather than perpetually making deals with leaders who have already proven themselves worse than useless.

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Gojko Berić on Dayton, from the December 16, 2020 Oslobodjenje:

"...Although it contains several "factory defects," the Dayton agreement in itself has not been an obstacle for Bosnia-Herzegovina and its citizens to get much more than they have gotten.

"I will note just several of the most important things that should have been done, but weren't: The missing dead should have been discovered and reburied; processing of war criminals should have been faster, fairer, and more efficient; the judiciary should have become completely independent of all political power; returnees to their homes should have been welcomed without exception, in the human and economic senses; religion should have been separated from state and politics; the educational system should have been devoid of incitement to religious and ethnic hatred; glorification of war criminals, as well as denial of genocide in Srebrenica, should have been punishable; people in power who obstructed this process should have been removed from all positions.

"None of this was realized or it was realized in an extremely reduced measure. And today, after all these years, there is a fruitless search for some ten thousand disappeared; processing of war crimes has been vastly selective, slow, and sloppy; the judiciary has become a cancerous wound on the entire system; commemorations are arranged for convicted war criminals in the presence of high political figures and representatives of the clergy...

"Who is guilty for all that horror? To the greatest extent, domestic politicians, because no one prohibited them from doing their work. Will any of them answer for the thirty stolen years of our lives? No, they won't.

"...When all is said and done, it is clear that the Dayton agreement, with small and uncertain fixes, remains to be our destiny. The international community does not have the will to get involved in eliminating its "factory defects," and our ruling infrastructure would not even think of agreeing to such a task."

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