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

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Bosnia update, July 31, 2022
Fascism; Trends; A note about corruption; Electoral reform; Srebrenica, Prijedor, and more.

I'm going to stand by two statements from my last blog entry (June 19, 2022): 1, fascism is not dead, and 2, There's nothing new in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but long-term trends that could lead to changes continue to develop. Items from this entry will illustrate these points anew. I will discuss expressions of fascism in Bosnia; the Srebrenica and Prijedor anniversaries; the problem of accession to the EU, and recent turmoil over electoral reform.

But first, here's a vignette that eloquently depicts the essence of Bosnia's dysfunction. Just at the end of last week (July 29, 2022) the first-instance corruption trial of several members of the Bosniak nationalist party, SDA, ended. Since before the 1990s war, the SDA, founded by Alija Izetbegović and others, has been by far the most popular political party among Bosniaks. Amir Zukić was general secretary of this party for over a decade, and Asim Sarajlić was a young war hero who went on to become a political scientist, vice president of the SDA and, for over ten years, a delegate to the state-level House of Representatives.

Along with several other SDA stalwarts, Zukić and Sarajlić were tried for "illegal influence peddling," that is, the sale of jobs in the large companies Elektroprivreda and Elektrodistribucija, Bosnia's powerful electric utility and distribution companies. They were also charged with "abuse of position" (the standard euphemism for corruption) and for receiving monetary awards for their corrupt activities. Among the others tried was Esed Džananović, a member of the SDA's Main Administrative Board and the former executive director of Elektroprivreda.

The half-dozen accused—including a driver and a postman—were charged with arranging employment in the utility companies in exchange for between 10,000 and 30,000 KM ($6,000 to $18,000) depending on the position offered. A condition for employment was proof of membership in the SDA.

In the end, Sarajlić was acquitted, and all the others, including Zukić, were convicted and sentenced to terms between 1.5 and six years imprisonment. I note that the US had previously placed Zukić and Sarajlić on a black list for corruption, and that Zukić was removed from the SDA upon his indictment for corruption. Sarajlić resigned from his position in the SDA in early 2020 after being accused of tampering with internal party elections, but he remains a delegate to parliament.

The recent verdict can be appealed.

I bring up this corruption case not because it is remarkable, but the reverse: it is so unexceptional as to be banal, something that every Bosnian knows about, and a practice carried out by members of almost every political party that ever got into power. This is the nature of the strankokratija, rule by the party. Ruling parties have the power to place their loyal members into influential positions in state-run companies, and this is one of the major perks of power. It is legal, but selling positions is not. However, as they say, every bird on the branch ("ptica na grani") knows that such practices are common.

Influence peddling is just one facet of the pervasive corruption that explains two things: why young (and not so young) people are leaving Bosnia by the thousands, and why politicians work harder to raise their already-impressive salaries than they do to make the state they run work better for ordinary people. It works just fine, for them. This gets to the heart of how Bosnia-Herzegovina doesn't work: the Dayton agreement defines the constitutionally recognized element of Bosnian politics as the ethnicity, rather than the individual, and this gives corrupt ethno-nationalist leaders on all three sides free rein to divide and plunder. And as long as ordinary citizens and international officials do not recognize and confront this dynamic, all the other plagues of Bosnia will continue.

Fascism versus anti-fascism in Mostar

There is an imposing memorial cemetery on a hillside in the western part of Mostar, dedicated to the memory of Partisan soldiers from that region who were killed during World War II. It was designed by the prominent architect Bogdan Bogdanović, and it contains 700 graves. In mid-June the Partisan cemetery was attacked in the middle of the night and every one of the 700 gravestones was damaged. This is not the first such attack, but it is the most serious one. The incident surpasses the meaning of the term "vandalism," as it constitutes an assault on the memory of the anti-fascist resistance during WWII by unidentified people who adhere to the fascist, Croat ultra-nationalist movement during that war known as the Ustashe. That movement re-surfaced and committed atrocities anew during the 1990s war, and it has been tolerated—and sometimes encouraged—by local powers since then.

In an opinion piece published June 20, Editor-in-chief of the Sarajevo daily "Oslobodjenje" Vildana Selimbegović compared the attack on the Partisan cemetery with Russia's attack on Ukraine, saying that both events "confirm the lesson that fascism is not dead." Selimbegović noted that anti-fascism is a "civilizational value" for all of Europe, and that the Ukrainians are "fighting for all of us—for the whole continent." And that the anti-fascists of Bosnia-Herzegovina have work to do.

In fact, anti-fascists in the Mostar area, joined by a number of supporters from neighboring Croatia, demonstrated in protest of the attack soon after it took place. And more recently, the government of the Federation entity set aside 200,000 KM to help with restoration of the monument.

Meanwhile it has been a sore point that during or soon after the 1990s war, a number of streets in west (Croat-controlled) Mostar were named for fascist members of the WWII Ustashe movement. One street was named after the wartime minister of education, and two others were named after Ustashe commanders who committed atrocities against Serbs, Roma, and others.

There has been protest against this for many years, and international officials including High Representative Christian Schmidt, the head of the OSCE, and the British and US Ambassadors recently signed a letter urging that the names be changed. Finally, in mid-July the city council of Mostar agreed to change the names of six streets. Out of 35 council members, 25 voted for the changes. The ten who abstained did not do so because they wished to retain the old names, but out of protest that none of the streets were renamed after women. Several opposition politicians expressed strong resentment at this outcome.

This is a sensitive matter in the country where, in many cities, the number of streets named after women is around two or three per cent. In Prijedor, as in several other cities, there is now a movement to change the names of some streets to commemorate prominent women. In that city, out of 476 streets, only 16 are named for women.

There has also been a movement in Sarajevo to rename a street named after Mustafa Busuladžić, a Bosniak intellectual who was a virulent anti-Semite and a supporter of the Ustashe collaboration in Sarajevo during World War II. However, as of yet there has been no success in getting the name changed. Indeed, the anti-fascists of Bosnia-Herzegovina have much work to do.

Ongoing Secessionism in the RS

We recall that in December of last year, the National Assembly of the Republika Srpska (NSRS) announced that it would prepare a "transfer of authorities" to that entity, to be enacted in six months' time. This would include the creation of an entity tax authority, an entity judicial adminstration, re-establishment of the VRS (Army of the RS), and other competencies. The declaration was seen as a portent of looming war. Now in late June, President Dodik announced the postponement of realization of these projects, saying that "Serbs have never given up...we are biding our time for a better moment."

Dodik cited the complications arising from the war in Ukraine as contributing to the postponement, and commented that this was the "first time in history" that Serbs had backed down. In a speech delivered at a gathering in Serbia, marking an important VRS operation during the 1990s war, he said, "I pray to God that Trump will come to power again," apparently in the belief that Turmp's attitude toward secession would be more tolerant than those of the Biden administration.

In the past month there have been several setbacks to the RS's secessionist agenda, some of them delivered by the Bosnian state-level constitutional court. In late June the court ruled that the NSRS's December declaration about transfer of competencies was unconstitutional. Then a week into July the court temporarily annulled the NSRS creation of an RS pharmaceutical and medical equipment agency. In mid-July the court also declared unconstitutional a year-old NSRS law on non-recognition of former High Representative Inzko's decree prohibiting genocide denial and glorification of war criminals. Dodik, true to form, vowed not to respect any of the constitutional court's decisions, nor those of HR Schmidt.

It's notable that, since Inzko's decree a year ago, more than forty complaints have been lodged about violations of the prohibitions. But, while the number of violations has decreased, there have been no charges filed. A number of the complaints were lodged against Dodik, one of the most outspoken public deniers of genocide.

In mid-July Dodik visited Israel, where he met with the main rabbi of the Western Wall, as well as the Patriarch of the Christian Orthodox Church. In a visit to the Western Wall, he placed a note in the wall wishing for the independence of the RS.

Meanwhile in the northeastern RS city of Bijeljina, a place where latter-day Chetniks (extreme Serb nationalist) have been particularly active, a Chetnik gathering was scheduled for mid-July on the main square. In response to protests against this event lodged by officials from the Federation, the mayor prohibited the gathering, whereupon the local Orthodox Church offered its grounds for the event. So the Chetnik gathering was held on the church grounds.

There seems to be more resistance to Bosnian Serb secessionism and other fascist impulses from abroad than domestically. In early July, Germany suspended 120 million euros in assistance to infrastructure projects in the RS, citing the entity's secessionist policies.

Disappointment about EU Accession

It is a paradox that while Bosnian Serb nationalists are angling for secession, and Bosnian Croat nationalists are essentially promoting a "third entity" that would contribute to the breakup of Bosnia, all three sides are nevertheless advocating for accession to the European Union. EU expansion has been at a standstill for almost two decades, but the escalation of war in Ukraine has focused the minds of EU leaders. They have given new thought not only to the status of the Western Balkan states (Montenegro, Kosovo, Northern Macedonia, Serbia, Albania, and Bosnia-Herzegovina), but also to Ukraine and to Moldova.

All of the Western Balkans states have been in negotiations about accession for years, and all of them except Bosnia and Kosovo have been granted candidate status. This status is not necessarily a sign of progress, as conditions for entry into the EU are vast and painstaking, dealing with such matters as security, rule of law, judicial competencies, conflict of interest, public procurement, corruption, and much more. In the case of Bosnia, it has to prove that it can even function on its own as a state before it can be considered as a candidate. Ultimately, accession to the EU will require discontinuation of the Office of the High Representative—and the Dayton structure militates against such a development.

In late June officials of the EU held a meeting to discuss expansion. The Slovenian representative had proposed that Bosnia be granted candidate status, saying that if Ukraine and Moldova were given such status, it would only be fair for Bosnia to receive it as well. The presidents of Poland and Hungary also supported Bosnia's candidacy. One commentator compared Bosnia's progress toward candidacy with that of Ukraine—unfavorably, as even in the midst of a devastating war, Ukraine has made more effective inroads against corruption than Bosnia has.

Bosnia has held the status of "potential candidate" to EU accession for nearly twenty years. The steps Bosnia has to take to become a candidate have been clear for a long time. Bosnia opened negotiations for a "Stabilization and Association Agreement" in 2005, and the document was not ratified until 2015. Bosnia applied for membership in 2016. In 2019 the EU issued an advisory opinion listing 14 "key priorities" that the country should fulfill in order to enter into membership negotiations. These priorities call for specific steps Bosnia must take that create conditions for a stable, functioning, independent state that could perform its duties as a member of the EU. So far, Bosnia has fulfilled none of those priorities.

This puts in perspective the unrealistic calls for membership candidacy for Bosnia-Herzegovina and helps to explain why, at the end of June. the EU decided not to grant candidacy to Bosnia. The decision—which was also the same for all the other Western Balkan states—was explained as a response to an increase in authoritarian dynamics in Bosnia. On the other side, the decision was met with an outcry of disappointment in the country—especially in light of the fact that, on the other hand, the EU decided to grant candidacy status to Ukraine and Moldova. This decision represents a political, rather than a practical legal response, as Ukraine is in the throes of a war, and Moldova is partitioned by virtue of the breakaway status of the Transdniester region.

In both cases the status can be seen as the establishment of at least a symbolic push-back against Russian expansionism. This is of no solace to Bosnia. In this light the Banja Luka-based analyst Tanja Topić commented, "The EU had a flawed approach to the entire region...They were promoting stabilocracy and tolerating autocratic politicians and their derogation of the rule of law, naively believing that top leaders could guarantee safety and stability in the region. As a result of this process, instead of europeanisation of the Balkans, we are now witnessing balkanization of Europe.” In other words, the international community must dispense with the charade that a functioning state can be created out of Bosnia-Herzegovina under the rubric of what is known as the "Dayton straitjacket."

Anniversary Commemorations in Srebrenica and Prijedor

July 11 saw the 27th anniversary of the fall of the Srebrenica enclave and the ensuing genocide. Over the years, since the 2003 establishment of the memorial cemetery at Potočari, nearly 7,000 remains of genocide victims have been identified and reburied. On the whole, the number of those buried at each anniversary decreases over the years, as fewer and fewer mass graves are discovered. This year, the remains of fifty victims were reburied. The oldest victim, Husein Krdžić, was 59 when he was killed, and there were several teenagers as well. There were two pairs of twins buried. The total now buried at Potočari is 6,721, and there are a couple hundred others buried in other cemeteries. There are also unidentified remains that have been exhumed and are awaiting identification. That leaves at least a thousand victims still to be recovered. The remains have been discovered in 570 different places around the region.

As happens just about every year, there were provocations against the survivors and mourners this year. One of those was a rumor spread around that participants in a peace march to Srebrenica were going to create a violent incident and blame it on the RS police. There was also a plan by the hate group "Istočna alternativa" (Eastern Alternative), which posts photos of Putin in different parts of the RS, to screen a biography of Ratko Mladić in Srebrenica on the day of the anniversary. This was prevented.

Another provocation was the posting of photos along the route to Potočari of Serbs who had been killed during the war. That number, 3,267, is an inflated one manipulated to offset, or even justify, the killing of over 8,000 Bosniaks after the fall of Srebrenica. The number includes soldiers, and some civilians, killed at any time from the beginning of the war to the end, in a region much larger than the Srebrenica area. It is true that there were some attacks against civilians committed by forces trying to defend Srebrenica, but there was nothing remotely in proportion to the genocide committed in July, 1995.

There was a proposal in the state-level Council of Ministers to declare July 11 a day of mourning, but Prime Minister Zoran Tegeltija, along with three other Serb ministers, voted against this. Minister of Foreign Affairs Biserka Turković directed all ambassadors abroad to lower the Bosnian flag to half-mast at each embassy, but the Serb ambassador to Greece, and the one to Canada as well, refused to comply.

Meanwhile, outside of Bosnia-Herzegovina there were commemorations abroad, as far-flung as Chicago, Prague, Dortmund, Paris, and Canberra. There were numerous demonstrations in Great Britain, Sweden, Italy, and Canada.

In the days immediately after the anniversary, survivors have customarily visited sites where the massacres took place. This year, the mayor of Bratunac prevented them from visiting the building of the agricultural cooperative at Kravica. There, Serb soldiers killed between 1,000 and 1,500 men in one night.

The commemoration and reburial of people killed in Prijedor municipality takes place on July 20 each year. This year, the identified remains of 16 victims were reburied at the memorial cemetery at Kamičani, near Kozarac. These people were killed 30 years ago, at the start of the Serb assault on Bosniak and Croat communities in the municipality. During the war, over 3,150 people—including 102 children—were killed or disappeared in the municipality, and over 600 are still missing. Those remains that have been discovered were found in 501 sites, including over 70 mass graves.

The Electoral Reform Controversy

You'll recall that there were negotiations for over a year, up until late 2021, over how certain officials in the Federation entity were to be elected in Bosnia's general elections. Negotiations—primarily between leaders of the ethno-nationalist parties the Croat-run HDZ and the Bosniak-run SDA—took place in Neum, Brussels, and other locations. They never made any progress, because the Croat representatives were advocating what amounted to the electoral establishment of a third entity, and the Bosniak representatives were not willing to comply with what has been characterized as an ultimatum. In a very real sense the SDA has been collaborating with the HDZ in division of power for most of the time since before the 1990s war, but the HDZ's present demands are apparently a step too far.

In three out of the last four rounds of national elections, Željko Komšić has been elected as Croat member of the state-level presidency, defeating the HDZ leader Dragan Čović. This has enraged the Croat nationalists, as Komšić is not one of them, and he has reduced their opportunity to control the trajectory of politics. It also stings that many Bosniaks in the Federation have voted for Komšić—as an alternative to whoever was running for the Bosniak seat. The Bosniak candidate has until now been a member of the SDA.

Since voters for members of the presidency in the Federation all have the option to vote for any candidate—rather than exclusively for the Bosniak or Croat member—this affords a semblance of civic democracy not present in the RS, where citizens can only vote for one Serb candidate or another. It is this smidgen of civic rule that the Croat nationalists would like to erase, if they can. What they have been proposing over the years has been that only Croats can vote for a Croat member of the presidency. This would probably ensure that a member of the HDZ would win the seat—although the Croat vote for HDZ has decreased in recent years.

The manner of electing representatives to the Federation's upper house of Parliament, the House of Peoples, has also been in dispute. The Croat nationalists have essentially advocated for the devaluation of the potential Croat vote in cantons where such voters are not supremely loyal to the HDZ. These are cantons where the Croat component of the population is small and the HDZ is not active, such as BPK Canton (Goražde) and Unsko-Sanski Canton (Bihać). There are few Croat voters in these two cantons, but as the present rule stands, they automatically get a representative in the House of Peoples.

The HDZ proposal would remove the right of Croats in those cantons to have a delegate to the House of Peoples, and those Croat delegates would be added to the number coming from the cantons where the HDZ is dominant. This would ensure an HDZ lock on the Croat representation in that body. A similar manipulation would ensure an SNSD (the party of Dodik) hold on the Serb representation, so that Croat and Serb separatists would rule in the Federation's upper house of Parliament.

These and similar "reforms" would lock in ethnic supremacy in the political dynamics of the Federation, and would give the HDZ permanent dominance. Civic-minded analysts from within the Federation and abroad see such a development as equivalent to the creation of a "third entity," and a likely step toward the breakup of Bosnia-Herzegovina. This explains the strong alliance between the Serb and Croat separatist forces, as they share the same goal of dissolution of Bosnia.

There are two other sets of measures that have been under discussion that much more appropriately fit the term "reform." One set is technical, covering transparency and honesty in the electoral process. The other set pertains to several decisions made by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) at Strasbourg over more than a decade, starting with the 2009 Sejdić-Finci decision which acknowledged that Bosnia's constitution did not allow citizens who were not members of one of the main three ethnicities to run for a seat in the state-level presidency or the House of Peoples. The ECHR called on Bosnia to rectify this problem, and in subsequent decisions it found that Serbs in the Federation, and Croats and Bosniaks in the RS, also suffered discrimination because they could not run for the state-level presidency.

The ECHR further found in the 2014 Zornić case that a person declaring as simply "Bosnian" should also be allowed to run for the high offices. None of these findings have been implemented. They would require changes to the constitution, and the leaders of the country have not seen fit to make this happen.

A roiling controversy that dominated discussion for most of July was prompted by a leaked paper that revealed plans by the High Representative to impose reforms that closely resembled those promoted by the HDZ over the years. For about ten days in mid-month this resulted in a firehose-stream of denunciations by every civic-minded analyst, activist, academic, commentator, high official imaginable within and outside of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Everyone except Subcomandante Marcos weighed in. It was indeed disconcerting, at the very least, that the German representative of the international community was considering the imposition of a quite anti-democratic ethno-national structure upon the country where, as one commentator wrote, the politicians would now be able to choose their voters, rather than the reverse.

Here's just one example of the criticism that was expressed, from the US Helsinki Commission on July 27:
“We share the concerns of members of civil society, academia, and the political community in Bosnia and Herzegovina about the current proposal of the international community’s High Representative to make changes to Bosnia’s electoral system shortly before the upcoming general elections. These changes effectively only benefit the leading ethnically-based political party among Bosnia’s Croats and further entrench the divisive force of ethnicity in Bosnian politics as a whole. They fail to tackle the broader issues of citizen-based democracy that so obviously need to be addressed for the country to overcome destabilizing impasse and move forward. The timing of their introduction also is problematic.

Other commentators warned that in a move toward increased ethnocracy in Bosnia, the "biggest winner would be Putin," because it would heighten instability in the country and possibly lead to its breakup. On the other side, Bosnian Croat nationalists and leaders from neighboring Croatia stated that Schmidt was on the right track, doing the best thing for Bosnia .

Protest against the proposal went beyond the declarative; on July 25 between 7,000 and 10,000 people demonstrated in front of the OHR headquarters in Sarajevo. Dervo Sejdić (Roma, of the Sejdić-Finci lawsuit) spoke and called for Christian Schmidt to address the protestors; some called for his resignation. There was some politicking, in view of the upcoming elections in October, but the main mood was non-partisan and peaceful.

Two days later, Schmidt met with party leaders and announced his decision. He backed off from the political elements of reform, and instead just imposed some minor technical measures including fines for hate speech, electoral cheating, or partisan use of government resources in campaigning. He was quite irate and defensive in the delivery of his announcement, saying that people should devote their attention to real reform rather than attacking him. He left open the (unlikely) possibility for continued negotiations—and, for that matter, for additional imposition of reform through the use of his Bonn Powers.

All this seems to illustrate my earlier contention, that there is, regularly, much ado about something in Bosnia, and then nothing. There is secession; then there isn't. There will be war; then there won't. There will be a disastrous non-reform; then there won't be. But these are processes, rather than incidents. Any one of them could become real at some point, perhaps closer than one expects. The normal routine of political conduct stays the same, but the temperature rises. The route lies open for international officials to see the light, and for ordinary people to organize and push for civic democracy in the land.

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