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

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Bosnia Update, Sunday, November 27, 2022
Independence day; Electoral blowback; No justice for Dženan; EU accession?

Thursday, November 25, was Statehood Day for Bosnia-Herzegovina. This is the anniversary of the event in Mrkonjić Grad in 1943, in the middle of World War II, when the Partisans declared that Bosnia-Herzegovina was to be an independent federal unit within the framework of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Bosnian patriots look to this date as a foundational moment in the history of the modern Bosnian state, although the country's historical roots date back almost a thousand years.

Bosniaks and some other citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina celebrate the date as Statehood Day (Dan državnosti), and the holiday is enshrined in law in the Federation, but not in the Serb-controlled Republika Srpska entity. The period around the holiday saw proclamations from pretty much every public official in the Bosniak-dominated or anti-nationalist parties, and international officials all the way up to President Biden conveyed their congratulations to the state-level presidency.

This didn't set well with the separatist leaders of the RS; newly inaugurated RS President Dodik and the new Serb member of the state-level presidency, Željka Cvijanović (until recently RS president), both rejected the greetings, emphasizing that the date was not observed in the RS. There, the initialing of the Dayton agreement on November 21, 1995 is observed as the founding of the present state. The two entities have separate laws pertaining to holidays, and the only dates they celebrate in common are New Year's and Mayday. In the Federation, Statehood Day is a work holiday; for that matter, it is not widely celebrated in the Croat-dominated areas, although the work break is observed.

Dodik rebuffed Biden's greetings, saying that they were a "provocation." He went further by dragging Bosniak leader Bakir Izetbegović's ancestry into the discussion, accusing his grandparents of being members of a pro-Nazi division during WWII. This is reminiscent of what has become quite a blatant practice lately, in the context of the Russian assault on Ukraine, for fascists to call their enemies fascists.

Electoral Blowback

The bulk of recent news pertains to the blowback from the October 2 national elections. While there has been fraudulence and electoral engineering in every election since 1996, my impression is that the recent one takes the cake.

The main complaint about the results came from the opposition in the RS; leaders in the SDS and PDP parties asserted that their candidate for president of the entity, Jelena Trivić, had been robbed of her victory. In the early part of the vote counting, late on October 2, Trivić had been tentatively declared the winner, but that was turned around by the next morning, when the polling results showed Dodik some 30,000 votes ahead. Within a few days after the election, the opposition leaders called protest rallies in Banja Luka and Sarajevo. These protests went on sporadically for a couple of weeks, in the face of obstruction from the RS police force.

In the meantime, plentiful evidence of malversation came to light. Among other things, there had been thugs—in some cases armed—present at numerous polling stations to intimidate voters. There is video footage of ballots marked for Trivić being burned. Pro-Dodik party activists were seen tearing up ballots marked for Trivić. In other cases, video evidence showed people rendering ballots invalid by marking the box for Dodik when the Trivić box had already been marked.

In an even more blatant act of fraudulence, forged ballots showed up that had been printed on different paper, with a different font, with "no similarity" to the legitimate ballots. All of those were marked for Dodik. These ballots arrived in ballot bags from Bratunac, Šekovići, and Brčko. The bags had been slit open, with the forged ballots inserted, and then the bags were taped up.

In addition to all this, there were widespread reports of voters being threatened and blackmailed before the election, so that they would vote for Dodik. In other cases people were simply paid to vote the same way. It was also the case that employees in state-controlled companies were required to line up and be photographed at gatherings in support of Dodik's SNSD party.

The PDP asserted that some 65,000 votes had been stolen. In response to the protests, the Central Election Commission (CEC) decided to conduct a recount of ballots at the state level and in both entities, starting with 45 polling stations. The recount grew as the CEC found widespread evidence of improperly filled-out ballots and improper recording of local election results. In Doboj municipality, where the process of stealing votes was said to be "most perfected," 61 polling stations out of 106 failed to return unused ballots in sealed bags.

There were polling stations in areas that were known to be Trivić strongholds that sent in polling result forms with no votes counted for Trivić. The CEC reported irregularities at over 500 polling stations in 90 towns. On the other hand, OSCE monitors who were present at 1,785 polling stations evaluated the practices they witnessed as "95% positive." They noticed in 3% of cases that observers from political parties tried to influence voters, and in some cases tried to interfere with the work of the polling station committees. 

In a town near Bijeljina, 80 people came to vote with certificates stating that they were blind, necessitating assistance from helper who would fill out their ballots. Local residents remarked at the sudden epidemic of blindness, which only lasted a day or two. When the director of the Bijeljina health center was challenged for signing so many certificates, she responded that this was a "witch hunt" and vowed to sue.

Similar reports of blatant vote theft and fraud poured in as the CEC continued to broaden the recount over a period of two weeks. Acerbic relations between the counters and the ostensible victors escalated, with the CEC filing a criminal complaint with the Bosnian prosecutor's office because of the forged ballots, also against Dodik for verbal attacks on members of the CEC. On the other side, the mayor of Doboj announced that he would seek the removal of the head of the CEC for "humiliations," violation of human rights, and false accusations slandering Doboj. And the SNSD filed a criminal complaint against Trivić and other opposition figures for "slander" regarding the accusation of forged votes.

In the midst of the recount, President Dodik called a rally in support of the SNSD, saying that the CEC had made an "illegal decision to create chaos and instability in the RS" but that "no manipulation can change the wish of hundreds of thousands of citizens who gave their vote for a strong and stable RS." Some 30,000 people, bused in from around the RS, attended the "Fatherland Calls" rally. Dodik's friend Emir Kusturica, the renowned film director, gave a speech. At the end of the rally, Dodik announced that, if the recount did not go his way, the RS would leave Bosnia, and take its 49% of the country's territory with it.

The above-described electoral manipulations paint a picture reminiscent of a pre-modern time where the rule of law has not yet been introduced. But toward the end of October, the CEC finished recounting ballots from 2,238 polling stations and confirmed the results of the elections, declaring Dodik the winner. Six out of the seven CEC members voted in favor of this judgment, with the unanimous agreement that the rampant fraudulence could not have changed the outcome for Dodik.

In light of the barrage of information about electoral fraud, it seems astonishing that the CEC could have approved the results, but it is also conceivable that there had been too much confounding evidence in favor of those results, and too much evidence against the results had (been) disappeared. The fraudsters working in favor of the SNSD may have simply won by overwhelming the CEC with chaos. The existence of tens of thousands of invalid ballots supports this hypothesis.

Indeed, the watchdog organization Pod Lupom ("Under the magnifying glass") called on the CEC to annul the electoral results at all polling stations where there had been significant irregularities. The organization called on the CEC to sanction those responsible, stating that it was "not acceptable to document violations and then do nothing." But nothing, in fact, was what was done.

The day after the CEC's announcement, police arrested a newly elected member of the RS Assembly from the SDS for buying votes, along with a local policeman and the director of the senior residence where the vote-buying took place.

Overall, the three main ethno-nationalist parties—the SNSD, the Croat nationalist HDZ, and the Bosniak nationalist SDA—dominated the electoral results, as they have for most of the time since the first multi-party elections before the war, in 1990. However, in one instance the SDA was rejected: Izetbegović was soundly defeated in his bid for the state-level presidency by the non-nationalist SDP candidate, Denis Bećirović.

In mid-November Dodik's term as member of the state-level presidency concluded and he took leave of his fellow members Komšić and Džaferović, saying, "I'm glad I won't have to look at you anymore." He proceeded to create a scandal at his inauguration as RS president, which was boycotted by opposition representatives. The prescribed ceremony has the new president swearing to "honor the constitutions of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the RS," and Dodik simply skipped affirming this phrase, although he was legally required to do so. The Russian Ambassador to Bosnia, Igor Kalabuhov, attended the inauguration, saying that he "expected to carry on good collaboration with Dodik and Cvijanović." The prime minister of Serbia and the Orthodox Patriarch also attended.

It is worth asking here how much difference it would have made to the citizens of the Republika Srpska if Jelena Trivić and the rest of the opposition candidates had replaced Dodik and the SNSD clique. Not much. Recall that Mirko Šarović's SDS is the party whose operatives, under the leadership of Radovan Karadžić, broke up Bosnia, massacred thousands, and committed ethnic cleansing wherever they could reach. It is indicative that in the opposition's protest rallies after the elections, people held placards bearing photos of Karadžić and Ratko Mladić. Recall also that Trivić herself is an avowed admirer of WWII Chetnik leader Draža Mihailović. So how tempting is it to root for that side?

Analysis from a couple of commentators is pertinent here: Chief editor of the Sarajevo daily Oslobođenje Vildana Selimbegović wrote on October 31 about the SNSD, saying, "Their performance this year is particularly worrisome, as they have managed to completely legalize and legitimize election theft." And columnist Gojko Berić wrote on November 17, "No one seriously believes that the new government will be new in its intentions, and that it will work for the general good instead of for personal or party interests. All the main players are more or less the same. Bakir Izetbegović was thrown out of the saddle because he had succeeded in uniting and turning against himself more than 100,000 Bosniak voters...the problem is that behind the government there is only emptiness, a failed state and its failed, corrupted, and morally disfigured society. Old friends Milorad Dodik and Dragan Čović, united in obstruction and blockade of institutions, remain in place...[and] will continue to do the same work, combining their political ultimatums with the goals they wish to achieve."

Ordinary people in both entities feel the dishonesty and hopelessness of the political situation in Bosnia and that's why so many of them, rather than voting in the elections, have been voting with their feet. According to data presented by the World Federation of Diaspora BiH, some 170,000 people left the country just in 2021, and around a half million left since 2013, when the last census was conducted. [1]

Hamza Karčić, professor of political science, writes, "Most of the young people that have left Bosnia did so because the system is rigged and unjust. Instead of conducting politics the way they did in the post-war period, the politicians need to wake up to the reality of the mass exodus currently underway and its long-term implications." In a November 15 article, Karčić goes further than most commentators and provides a set of proposals to reverse the exodus, including tackling corruption; opening up employment opportunities, and generally focusing on improving the quality of everyday life. [2]

But isn't the system rigged, unable to fix itself? Prof. Karčić, how do you dislodge the fox that is guarding the chicken coop? Here, I'll give the last word to my friend Kurt Bassuener, senior associate of the Democratization Policy Council. I've been reading his doctoral thesis, "Peace Cartels: Internationally Brokered Power-Sharing and Perpetual Oligarchy in Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia," submitted mid-2020 for his PhD degree at the University of St. Andrews. The manuscript will be published as a book soon.

"Peace Cartels" compares the way politics works in the two countries, focusing on the postwar functioning of recovering states whose peace negotiations were facilitated by Western officials. Bassuener calls these deals "internationally brokered power-sharing arrangements." Regarding Bosnia, Bassuener's writing hits the spot, methodically describing not only what's wrong with the Bosnian Constitution (Annex 4 of the Dayton agreement), but with the international community's consistent enabling of the elite "leaders" of the dysfunctional, failed state that is Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The point I take from the thesis, above all, is that the Dayton setup works just fine for the elites of three ethno-nationalist groupings, and that the international community has not found a way—nor even really shown interest—to undo state capture and foster democratic functions in the country. As Bassuener writes in his introduction, "The political elites in both countries constitute peace cartels—assemblies of political, administrative, economic, criminal, and media power which pursue for-profit politics and avoid democratic or legal accountability. [My] conclusion details peace cartels’ reliance on fear and patronage to maintain popular acquiescence, as well as their leveraging fear to extract patronage from the external actors who midwifed them—for fear of a renewed conflict which is always implied."

Bassuener comments, "I have written previously about my view that corruption is not an incidental by-product of the system, but rather the point of the Dayton political system—and intentional in the design by local elites." As regards the international attempts to promote reform in Bosnia, Bassuener recounts a list of successive plans fostered by international officials, with each new, optimistic project falling flat after the last one. He notes that "the experts failed to confront the inherent obstacle—the very political elites who inhabit the system and are its prime beneficiaries are called upon to be the change agents."

With corrupt domestic leaders thus entrenched, and the international community ineffective at best, the only hope left for Bosnia is what pressure may come from the grassroots. Grassroots organizing has taken blows over the last ten years. It is not dead, by any means. But progressive movements of ordinary people for justice, democracy, and decent government face an uphill battle.

No Justice for Dženan

Here is a recent development in judicial processes that highlights the legal insecurity ordinary citizens of Bosnia feel. In spring of 2016, 22-year-old Dženan Memić was killed while riding with his girlfriend near Vrelo Bosne, a park on the outskirts of Sarajevo. Evidence illuminating the crime was sparse, but the case attracted widespread attention in the city. The unsolved killing compounded people's long-term anxiety over their physical safety. This had been a public matter since the killing of young Denis Mrnjavac on a Sarajevo streetcar in 2008. The matter of mysterious killings was not confined to the capital city; another prominent case was that of David Dragičević, who was killed in Banja Luka in 2018.

In both cases, parents of the murdered sons waged a long-term legal and public campaign to bring the truth to light and to prosecute the culprits. Not only was the concerned public supportive, coming out on the streets in a sustained manner in support of the survivor families, but soon, people from Sarajevo and Banja Luka were attending each other's demonstrations, and they and the parents of the victims were expressing solidarity with each other. On the grassroots level, this was one of the largest inter-entity cooperations of its kind since the war.

There was evidence of a cover-up in both cases, pointing to the involvement of local police. In the case of Dženan Memić, a Romani father and son were accused of having run him over with a car, but that case fell apart when it became obvious that evidence was falsified and concealed. The two were subjected to three consecutive court processes before being left alone.

The Memić case finally came to court in October of 2021, after public pressure compelled prosecutors to gather a significant amount of evidence against five people, including two police officials, demonstrating participation in a cover-up. The five were accused of "organized crime, illegal interference, prevention of proof, giving false testimony, and assisting the perpetrator after the commission of a criminal act" in the Memić case.[3]

The judicial proceedings focused on a cover-up, rather than the actual murder, for which charges have not yet been filed. The trial wound up early this month (November 2022), after presentation of extensive evidence of concealment of video tapes that could have helped to solve the crime; there was also testimony revealing intervention by police officials to prevent discovery of evidence. On top of this, it was shown that the Romani pair had been beaten while in custody, to produce a false confession.

Given the preponderance of evidence for cover-up, it was widely expected that there would be a finding of guilt in the case when the verdict was delivered on November 24. But the Memić family and supporters were surprised when the accused were all found "not guilty."[4] Adding insult to injury, the judge in the case delivered a lecture accusing the media of creating a "negative atmosphere." The result of over six years of effort by the Memić family is very disappointing, but there will be a appeal for a second-instance retrial. The struggle is not over.

EU Accession...?

In the first decade or so after the end of the war, "going to Europe"—that is, joining the European Union, was in Bosnians' minds nearly synonymous with going to heaven. In more recent years, the EU has experienced "enlargement fatigue" and has held prospective candidates at arm's length. And would-be EU members in the Western Balkans are observing an alliance that is not as alluring as it used to be, what with Brexit, and the rise of divisive movements led by ultra-nationalists in a number of countries. For quite some time the message from Europe to Bosnia has been "You're not ready," which is not only the EU's off-putting stance, but it is also the truth.

Then on October 12, the European Commission announced that it would recommend that Bosnia-Herzegovina be granted candidate status. The question will be considered at an EU summit scheduled for December. Oliver Varhelyi, EU Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement, stated that "We do this [give candidate status] for the people of Bosnia, however, this comes with high expectations. The political elite must transform this into reality."

Varhelyi was referring to a number of conditions that Bosnia would have to meet, including, among others, the creation of laws regulating the judiciary; preventing conflict of interest; ensuring the prohibition of torture; protecting the safety and free expression of journalists; and strengthening measures against corruption and organized crime. Bosnia applied for EU membership nearly seven years ago, in early 2016. In response, three years later the European Commission adopted an "Opinion" presenting 14 priorities for Bosnia to fulfill along the way to membership.

The Opinion describes measures Bosnia must take to cement rule of law, to harmonize many aspects of public administration with the laws of the European Union, to strengthen the market economy, and to press reforms in democratization of the country. The steps mentioned by Mr. Varhelyi are contained and expanded in this document.

Borut Pahor, the president of Slovenia, had filed an initiative for Bosnia's candidacy status in February of this year. In June, the EU granted Ukraine candidacy status. Given this development, it is tempting to conclude that the (escalated) Russian invasion of Ukraine in February influenced the European Commission to promote Bosnia's candidacy.

Mr. Pahor welcomed the measure and commented that it was a "significant move for peace and stability in the Western Balkans." He added that Bosnia's accession to the EU should not be viewed in a narrow context of harmonization of rules, but as a "first-rate geopolitical issue." But this is not a case of Europe saying "We want you in the European Union." Rather, it is a case of Europe saying "We want you in our camp," that is, in order to close doors to persistent Russian meddling in Bosnia.

The same day that Varhelyi announced the EU's consideration of candidacy status, EU Ambassador to Bosnia Johann Sattler noted two particular points of dissatisfaction with Bosnia's progress: Domestic obstruction to EU integration, and undermining of state institutions by politicians in the Republika Srpska. In response, Vildana Selimbegović writes, "By now it has become clear as day that those who are paid to implement reforms are the very ones who want them the least. Reforms would mean, among other things, a reckoning with nepotism, corruption, and organized crime in their own ranks. That is why the politicians of Bosnia-Herzegovina agree on only one thing: as long as things are bad for the people, their positions are secure."[5]

The Democratization Policy Council, in a series of tweets from "DPC_global," responded to to the European Commission's announcement with comments even more skeptical. The first tweet said that the recommendation "turned enlargement into even more of a farce than it already was...the EC’s recommendation represents yet another acceleration of regression, rather than progress. BiH citizens will see through the spin and view it as a cynical exercise and empty gesture. Democratic confidence and aspiration will further erode in BiH & regionally."  

The DPC's conclusion to the twitter thread read, "Perhaps this is the point for EU members who pay lip service to enlargement, but in fact want the region to be a mere geopolitical buffer zone" – which reinforces my suspicion that this is all about countering Russian influence in Bosnia, and very little about actual EU accession for Bosnia.

NOTES:
[1] "Two Million Bosnians in the Diaspora," Sarajevo Times, November 22, 2022.
https://sarajevotimes.com/two-million-bosnians-in-the-diaspora/
[2] "Bosnia is becoming depopulated -- What to do about it?," Balkan Insight, November 15, 2022. https://balkaninsight.com/2022/11/15/bosnia-is-becoming-depopulated-what-to-do-about-it/
[3] "Uoči presude u Sarajevu: Šta se zna o slučaju Dženan Memić?" (On the eve of the verdict in Sarajevo: What is known about the Dženan Memić case?"), Oslobodjenje, November 23, 2022.
[4] "Bosnians Accused of Covering Up Evidence in Young Man’s Death Acquitted," Balkan Insight, November 24, 2022. https://balkaninsight.com/2022/11/24/bosnians-accused-of-covering-up-evidence-in-young-mans-death-acquitted/
[5] "Šta se promijenilo: BiH ili Evropa?" (What changed, Bosnia-Herzegovina, or Europe?), by Vildana Selimbegović, Oslobodjenje, October 17, 2022

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