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

home  ♦  about the blog ♦ the book ♦ the author ♦ buy the book  ♦  contact

April 29, 2020
The epidemic continues; scandals arise.

In Bosnia-Herzegovina it seems that all the news is still about the coronavirus. But if you look a bit closer you see that the epidemic is just a veil over everything else that has already been happening and continues to happen: the corruption and madness of domestic Bosnian politics; the travails of the African and Asian migrants attempting to travel further into Europe; and the dysfunctional relationships of the small states of the region, ever at the whim of empire. All these dynamics are still playing out. Sometimes they are distorted by the pandemic, sometimes they are slowed down, and sometimes they are accelerated.

At the beginning of this month (April 2020) I reported that something over 400 people had tested positive for the coronavirus. Four weeks later, that number seems low. Today's (April 29) number of verified infections stands at 1667, with 92 deaths. With four times the earlier count, we see that Bosnia has not experienced the near-exponential spread of the epidemic that took place elsewhere, notably in Italy, Spain, and the US. The main reason for this is that the epidemic took a little longer to reach Bosnia and, when it did, the various levels of government implemented serious restrictions (as I described in my previous blog entry) to keep the rate of infection down.

From what I can tell from a distance, the trajectory of people's experiences resembles that in many other countries. Masses of ordinary people have stayed home; public transportation, schools, and public events have been shut down; and governmental agencies have worked to enforce the restrictions. At the same time, some people protested—as elsewhere—against the restrictions, without much effect. Here and there people have violated curfews, but for the most part, there has been cooperation. Bosnia has been relatively lucky, rather to the surprise of people who are used to things going wrong in their country.

This doesn't mean that the epidemic has been shut down, as they are reporting in New Zealand, nor that the various levels of government have behaved in an exemplary fashion. Rather, they have for the most part tried to behave responsibly with limited resources, they have received some assistance from various directions, and there have not been instances of flagrant and overwhelming stupidity or denial such as are still occurring in, say, Belarus or the United States. A week into April, the World Health Organization announced that cautionary measures in Bosnia had led to good results.

With the health crisis, Bosnia's economy has returned to the post-2008 state of recession. A mid-April report has some 21,000 newly unemployed people just in one entity, the Federation. The budgets of both entities are seriously strained. The tourist industry is completely shut down. Small businesses are closing, although government subsidies have been in force. "Corona laws" have been passed establishing these subsidies along with restrictions such as curfews and quarantines.

In several instances politicians have decided to forego part of their grandiose salaries to augment entity or canton budgets under duress. The Federation's parliament reduced its representatives' salaries by 1,000 KM. RS President Cvijanović decided to forego 50% of her salary for March and donate it to a solidarity fund. And in mid-April the Zenica Canton premier and ministers donated 20% of their pay for improvement of the health care infrastructure.

That infrastructure is a weak one. As I noted elsewhere, doctors and nurses have been leaving Bosnia for several years. There are still some excellent practitioners left, but they lack adequate resources, as in much of the world. By way of comparison, the isolation ward in Sarajevo hospitals can receive 45 patients, while the capacity in Split, on the Dalmatian coast, is almost 10 times that much.

In this context one commentator, describing the state of health services, wrote early in April, "After the fourth death in Sarajevo...the virus is not what people fear. The effects of the epidemic do not create anywhere near the amount of terror that people feel in the face of twenty years of nepotism, political favoritism, fixed tenders, carelessness, false managers who remove intensive care units because they do not bring a profit, and who 'return favors' instead of acquiring basic medicines and equipment, and train staff, who celebrate savings instead of accomplishments, and who see privatization as the future of the state."

In other words, the health sector is as corrupt as any other part of the economy in Bosnia, although the corruption tends to reside at the managerial level, with many honest and able practitioners just trying to do their best.

In neighboring Croatia, one doctor said, "Don't clap for us [medical practitioners]; save your palms to slap the politicians." Among other things, he was responding to the statement of one Croatian parliamentary representative who said, "Do you consider it normal for the entire state to be paralyzed and in quarantine for months just because some grandfather or great-grandfather would like to live a day, a week, a month, or a year longer?"

As commentator Jasmin Mujanović writes, "... all that the coronavirus pandemic has changed in the Western Balkans is the momentary thematic backdrop and the scale for political manipulation. The real crisis here is human and political; it is the political class of the region that, for more than a quarter-century, has put its own machinations and profit above the welfare and dignity ordinary citizens."

In this vein there has been a discussion, echoed elsewhere in the world, about whether an authoritarian government is better able to safeguard public health—or at least slow down an epidemic—than a democratic government. It is tempting to compare the two Bosnian entities to answer this question, because in the RS power resides in the hands of one party, while there is relative pluralism in the Federation. Columnist Gojko Berić writes that Milorad Dodik, head of the SNSD, has to approve every political action that takes place in the RS—that he is "acting like a little Putin." But the comparison doesn't really provide clarity, because in the Federation there is a plurality of "little Putins," and the epidemic has not behaved markedly differently in one entity or the other.

Politicians continue to fire rhetorical barbs at each other, with the boisterous but weak opposition in the RS challenging Dodik for his corruption, and with Dodik admonishing Bosniak politicians in the Federation, telling them to mind their own business and look after their own entity. Dodik has recently revived the discussion of RS secession from Bosnia, but with waffling that's reminiscent of the US president. On April 23 he declared that "Serbs are trapped; Bosnia-Herzegovina is not the place for the Republika Srpska," and, "When the epidemic passes, the RS will return to resolving political questions...there is no place for us in this kind of Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Sarajevo and the foreigners are constantly trying to abolish the RS."

But just a couple of days later Dodik commented that "Secession is not on our agenda, not any kind of dissolution. When we talk about that, we're talking about some possible, eventual, far in the future, if there is not success in the realization of a concept of negotiation and valuing our positions..." The rambling nature of this sentence recalls Trump's customary prosody. And Dodik continues, "Probably it is difficult for Bosniak politicians to accept even the existence of the RS...and for us Serbs it is difficult to accept that we are in the framework of Bosnia-Herzegovina. And here one must seek reconciliation, a kind of mutual respect...".

One can speculate whether Dodik has become unhinged, like the US president, or he is simply practicing the trumpian strategy of staking out all different kinds of positions so that he can refer to any one of them when it's convenient.

In any event, in the last week of April, as in parts of the US, there has been a slight relaxation of restrictions on people's movement. This was preceded by a lawsuit filed before the Bosnian Constitutional Court arguing that the near-complete prohibition of movement for people under 18 or over 65 was an unconstitutional impingement on those groups' freedom of movement. The Constitutional Court agreed—without striking down the restrictions. It gave the government of the Federation five days to relax the prohibitions.

By Friday, April 24, people in quarantine in the Federation were allowed to go home (and stay there), and the curfew was lifted. People over 65 and under 18 were allowed to go out of their homes on alternate days. With the popular Mayday holiday coming up, there will be partial curfews in both entities. And all who enter Bosnia-Herzegovina will still be required to undergo examinations and confined movement for 14 days. After Mayday, service businesses such as flower shops and hair and cosmetics salons will be allowed to reopen for business, under strict new safety rules.

Officials in the RS responded with displeasure at the relaxation in the Federation, calling it "crazy and irresponsible." The mayor of Banja Luka declared that lifting the quarantine in the Federation could endanger the health situation in the entire country. And cooler heads in the Federation also criticized the relaxation, saying that it was a gambit for popularity on the part of the ruling Bosniak nationalist SDA party, angling for an opening the day before the start of the holy month of Ramadan. The SDA was compared unfavorably with the leaders of the Islamic Community, who urged the faithful to observe the holy rituals of Ramadan at home, rather than in the mosques. Indeed, in a sight never seen before in Sarajevo, services held in the grand mosques in the center of town involved only the imam, the muezzin, and a few members of the administrative committees.

After the lifting of the curfew, kafanas and restaurants are still closed. People wishing for social contact began gathering at gas stations, which are open at night. The gas stations began selling alcoholic drinks and food. So this practice has been banned after 8:00 p.m.

*

The migrants from Asia and north Africa, stranded on their trek to central and western Europe, are faring the worst of anyone in Bosnia. Numbers are evasive, but there are said to be some 7,000 to 10,000 people stuck in northwest Bosnia, Sarajevo, and Tuzla. The RS has been effectively inhospitable to the travelers. In the present crisis that unfriendliness has spread and some officials, notably Minister of Security Fahrudin Radončić, has called for deportation of the migrants back to their home countries. Referring to the practice of some migrants to conceal their travel documents, Radončić states that it is "possible that there are hidden terrorists...that manner of hiding one's identity possibly has to do with terrorist groups that will go into the EU countries and...perform the role of sleepers until they receive orders from some terrorist group." Radončić here betrays the authoritarian and ultra-nationalist leanings he has always had.

In the first part of April a news article read, "1,200 migrants sleeping on the streets, but not one has corona." This headline turned out to be sarcasm, as it was revealed that only two migrants had been tested. Most are living in sub-standard shelters—if any at all—without access to hygienic conditions and supplies. Some are still trying to cross the border into Croatia, whereupon if the border police apprehend them, they are treated with brutality and shoved back into Bosnia.

In mid-April the Bosnian government at the state level decreed that foreigners without identification—that is, massively, the migrants—are prohibited from straying from their camps and collective centers. Thus the government's authoritarian impulses are most strongly expressed against the migrants.

In the third week of April police began rounding up migrants in the northwestern part of the country, around Bihać, and removing them to a newly built camp near Lipa, well removed from the urban centers. People with concern for the migrants have expressed mixed feelings about this camp. On one hand, under the best conditions it could provide health care, regular meals, warmth, and clean lodgings—things that have all been unavailable to the migrants. On the other hand, although these services are promised, experience shows that they are not guaranteed. Time will tell. The camp is supposed to hold up to 1,000 people.

Meanwhile, since Lipa is centered in a mainly Serb-inhabited part of the Federation, local Serbs have lodged protests, saying that they fear being overwhelmed by the mostly Muslim population of migrants.

*

The economist Eldar Dizdarević commented that "We can now bury the neoliberal economic doctrine...now it can be seen clearly that only the state can rescue the economy, and that theories about the invisible hand of the market are pure illusion." To the extent that any effective measures have been undertaken to save the Bosnian economy, it is the government that has taken them. And as with any smaller country, the larger surrounding countries (and some further afield) have stepped in to help—or to take advantage of the crisis.

In Serbia and in the RS, it has been Russia and China that have come out looking heroic, even though the United States provided emergency assistance first. This disconnect is in part due to the fact that Russian and Chinese aid have been met with great fanfare. In Serbia billboards have proclaimed the country's "iron friendship" with China—even though some of the aid from that country has proved defective and had to be returned.

Following political leanings, the RS has prominently received aid from Serbia, Russia, and Hungary. The Federation has received aid from Turkey, and less so from some Arab countries. The European Union, after a disastrous false start during which it restricted sharing of medical equipment even within its own boundaries, has significantly increased aid to Bosnia and Serbia—but without an accompanying improvement in its image.

In this context, in recent days a scandal of dramatic proportions has broken concerning equipment that the Federation purchased from China. For those who remember the astonishing level of corruption during the 1990s war, this incident in the present crisis should not be a surprise. One Sarajevo opposition politician, Elmedin Konaković said that "Bosnia is a state of thieves (lopovska država); the crisis is being used for enrichment."

Early April, the Federation's Civil Defense agency, headed by Fahrudin Solak, engaged an agricultural company based in Srebrenica to purchase and import 100 ventilators from China. The company, Srebrena Malina ("Silver Raspberry"), is owned and run by the writer and TV personality Fikret Hodžić. Srebrena Malina had no experience with medical equipment, no technicians to service it, no expertise. Nor did it have a license for such imports—until a few days after the ventilators arrived at Bosnian customs.

Fikret Hodžić is a close neighbor of Solak, who approved the expenditure of 10.5 million KM (about $7 million) for the ventilators.

Journalists who were curious about the reason Srebrena Malina was chosen for the import looked first into the market for the ventilators. They found that a high-quality ventilator could cost around $57,000. Multiply that by a hundred and you still get a remainder of several million, much more than what would be necessary for shipping, licensing, and import duties. But this is, in fact, not quite to the point; it turned out that the ventilators purchased from China are not high-quality machines at all, but lighter-weight, "emergency" ventilators more suitable for use in ambulances than in hospitals.

The scandal gets thicker. In the last week of April various medical experts and health officials—who were never consulted before the purchase of the ventilators—weighed in. Among other things, they noted that the present use of ventilators already in possession of health care institutions in Bosnia is somewhere around ten per cent! Thus, Hodžić—and whoever he stands to kick back a percentage to—is making several million in profit for sub-standard machines that are not even needed in Bosnia.

Furthermore, it turns out that Hodžić's company never possessed the necessary license to import the medical equipment—until they were granted it as the boxes containing the ventilators were sitting, uninspected and unlevied, at the customs headquarters. Then, the license came through, accompanied by statements from Hodžić such as, "I have observed every law pertaining to this process" and "I stand at the service of my country" (my paraphrase).

It appears that Solak and Hodžić, and probably others, have broken a variety of laws, such as the one requiring an importing company to have the proper licensing, not to mention the problem of profiteering. A politician in the opposition Social Democrat Party commented, "It is not possible to conclude otherwise than that the current government could hardly wait for the pandemic in order to put the people's money in the pockets of the politically acceptable 'businessmen.'" The State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA—a national police agency like the FBI) is already investigating the case.

Elmedin Konaković stated, "In this country 25 percent of the economy is in the grey zone. If we had a responsible and brave government, to reckon with the thieves, we would have reserves like those of Slovenia. We would be able to allocate billions [to helpful purpose] if our leaders weren't the way they are—the balance sheets are not important to them; only the tycoons who can't be controlled are important, because they are members of the political party in power."

There is sure to be more news about this scandal, unless it gets covered up by a bigger one.

Meanwhile, there was a mini-scandal in Srebrenica, where on April 10 the first person was diagnosed with the coronavirus. Shortly after that a video clip was leaked showing an April 7 gathering of Orthodox celebrants observing a saint's day together in the Karno monastery near Srebrenica. The video shows several dozen people, none with masks, sitting closely together around lunch tables.

This blatant violation of safety precautions and RS restrictive measures might have gone unprotested if not for the fact that not only was Srebrenica's Mayor Grujičić present, but the video also showed people singing nationalistic songs, thus: "What would a church be without a priest, and what would Serbdom be without Chetniks?"

The case was referred to the Zvornik police administration, eliciting the response, "It is true that the RS Headquarters for Emergencies has prohibited public gatherings in the RS, but the area of the religious building is not public space." The Headquarters further commented that church officials were encouraged to observe health precautions, but it did not promise any further action.

Unlike the scandal with Srebrena Malina, this one has already vanished from public attention.

To respond to this blog, click here to e-mail me.