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Trial and Error in the Balkans
Ejup Ganic
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Multinational police patrol in downtown Mostar, Bosnia-
Herzegovina, in 1996. (Don Davies / UPI)
Click image to enlarge.
Security, universal values, and responsible, effective global governance are terms that have been used for many years but whose implications are always changing. What does it mean, for example, to be safe today? What values are promoted and, more importantly, defended today by international organizations? How deep is our understanding of global problems such as terrorism, unemployment, hunger, and war? How prepared are we to deal with these problems?
These are difficult questions, but I will attempt to shed some light on the problems faced by the international community as a whole and the United Nations in particular by drawing from personal experience. Bosnia-Herzegovina learned some answers to these questions the difficult and perhaps the only way--by testing our policies, our charters, our human rights decrees and instruments for their implementation, the rules of conduct in war and the rules of building the peace under the watchful eye of the international community. I use the word "our" purposefully, because I wish to underscore that Bosnia was recognized as an independent country by the European Union and became a member of the United Nations at the very beginning of its painful ordeal and of course remained so throughout the war years.
I come from Bosnia, a small country in the Balkans that from 1992 to 1995 endured one of the worst humanitarian crises in modern history. Tens of thousands of its citizens disappeared or were killed, and hundreds of thousands became refugees or displaced persons. All this came about as a direct result of an aggression that held the citizens of Sarajevo under a fully televised and internationally broadcast siege for four years, under the constant terror of shelling and sniper fire, without water, without food, without electricity. This aggression had as one of its missions something we have come to term "ethnic cleansing"--the specific targeting and extermination of a given ethnic group along with its entire identifying cultural heritage, whether it be libraries, bridges, or places of religious worship.
During these years of struggle, we learned much about ourselves and about the international community. We were, and to an extent still are, the patients who tested the emergency room facilities and numerous other hospital wings of the international community. When we needed a police officer, they sent us a doctor. When we needed a doctor, we got a schoolmaster. My point is that it is only when you have a problem that you truly learn how the international community works.
Efforts for prevention
I regret the loss of my illusions. I still remember the months preceding the open conflict: the tension, the insecurity, and the pleas for assistance. A high-ranking official of the international community whose name I will not mention said to me then: "In order for us to get involved, you must first have a war, then a cease-fire, and then we come in." This is the first problem faced by the world today, increasingly lived out in the shade of terrorism: We do not place enough efforts on prevention; we are only capable of reaction. And we do not often react wisely.
One of the reasons for this pattern is lack of understanding, whether honest or simply convenient. For example, anyone listening to news reports during the first couple of years of the war in Bosnia would probably have heard something along the following lines: "Civil war is still raging in the Balkans. The Muslim army was pushed back by Serbian forces near the Croatian village of so and so." This seemingly simple and unbiased statement is in fact a testimony of a very specific viewpoint. A very different picture might be formed in the collective public perception if instead this were reported: "In Central Europe, aggression on Bosnia-Herzegovina continues. The Bosnian army was pushed back," and so forth. My point is this: Why Muslim and Serbian armies; why not Muslim and Eastern Orthodox armies near a Catholic rather than a Croatian village? Why one religion and two ethnic groups?
When one says "the Balkans," the mind forms a picture that does not reflect a country an hour's flight from Italy, Greece, or Austria. Wars in the Balkans are seemingly fought by bloodletting wild men, whereas European and American wars are fought for God and free trade. When one says civil war, one is describing a fight in the family--you can send counselors but there is little you can actually do. Aggression, of course, would imply different rules of possible engagement. Again I am using an example close to me, but one can easily reflect in the same manner on news reports today, describing different crises around the world.
The talks held in general assemblies of international organizations invent their own terminology. Srebrenica, for instance, was a safe area rather then a safe haven. Even ethnic cleansing is a new term invented specifically to describe the events in this small Balkans country. Genocide is less used--perhaps because it conjures up images of the Holocaust, images of the kind of terror we swore would not happen again on European soil.
Please do not misunderstand. I am attempting to shed light on a universal problem. We add amendments and annexes, new words to our vocabulary when we cannot or do not wish to act. What good is our definition of a safe haven when we have not accounted for a safe area in fact? How do we explain to the people of Srebrenica what happened to thousands of their sons, brothers, and husbands after they were escorted onto Serbian buses under the watchful eye of the United Nations? How do we explain that the Human Rights Charter did not cover their specific situation? Again it does not apply to Bosnia only. Why do we call "a Middle East peace process" something that is simply a terrible and ongoing war? Does it help us feel better about our impotence? Or does it make us feel there is progress where there is so little? What concepts will we invent in our new global "war on terror"? What sacrifices will we make to create room for these new concepts?
Search for Sarajevo
During the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, its capital, Sarajevo, endured a four-year-long siege that brought multiple civilian casualties coupled with a devastation of the city's infrastructure, with cultural and religious objects the primary targets of the irrational onslaught. At the time, 90 percent of the city's population was Muslim. The world's public and political eye more or less accepted the fact that, in Sarajevo, Muslims as such were targeted and besieged. I once asked an ambassador who was visiting as a part of an EU observer mission whether Europe and the West in general would tolerate the siege of Sarajevo for this long if the targeted population were Catholic rather than Muslim. The question caused unease but he finally said: "No, of course such a siege of a Catholic city would not be tolerated, and you know that."
I had a similar discussion with a high-ranking UN official. If there existed a UN body with similar competencies to the UN Security Council, composed of representatives of world's major religions together with intellectuals and independent thinkers such as Nobel Peace Prize winners, would such a body be comfortable with the fact that the world is capable of tolerating the siege of Muslims in Sarajevo? The decisions made within such a body would not stem from the individual national interests of countries represented in the UN Security Council but would rather be guided by the most basic of moral and humanitarian principles. Such a body, we agreed, would be most useful and most needed, and it would surely strengthen the role of the United Nations. But how can such a body be created? Who has the strength and the determination for such a long campaign of such uncertain outcome? Perhaps the lack of security we feel in today's world will spur many of us to join forces in such an effort.
I argue for a return to our most basic values, for simplicity of approach, for a reevaluation of our guiding principles, and for a reexamination of international mechanisms for the protection of peace. This is a call for dialogue of the purposeful kind--the kind that is followed by action, the kind that addresses the difficult questions. Boutros Boutros-Ghali once told me: "Go to Washington, to London, to Paris, Moscow. The decisions are made there, not in the UN assembly."
The United Nations, as a body, needs to consider its role in this new world. I still believe that organizations such as the United Nations are our last stronghold. I argue for an increase of its powers; I hope for its increased confidence in itself. If the United Nations is the body, then the member states are the muscles that allow it to move, to perform. Criticism of the United Nations is in the same breath criticism of the nations that stand united in it. Governments must play a decisive role in strengthening the mechanisms of our joint security, the structures we create to uphold our common values. We cannot be perfect countries--today's world offers no such luxuries--but we can be willing ones.
A flawed peace
The war as defined by the international community brought to Bosnia a very specific form of peace, also defined by the international community. The Dayton Peace Agreement signed on December 14, 1995, in Paris brought an end to years of bloodshed and genocide, and as such it was a painful compromise that created two Bosnian entities. While stopping the war was its great achievement, Dayton has proved a less-than-effective tool for managing the peace. This is not just the fault of the agreement itself, whose aspirations went beyond a cease-fire. Dayton's problem, so to speak, is that it relies on political will and consensus between those who sought to divide the country and those who sought to defend it. The resulting situation is one of great discrepancy--a Republika Srpska entity,* a creation that has in many ways blessed the genocide and tended to abuse powers granted, implementing those aspects that suit divided political agendas while obstructing the implementation of those provisions aimed at unifying the country. Even when you have the finest score of music, bad musicians will produce a bad sound--and Dayton was no Mozart to begin with.
The result is probably the greatest democracy in the world. When you do not wish to make tough calls, when you do not deal with the root of problems, you create a system that makes up in complexity what it lacks in reason. Bosnia is the greatest democracy in the world because you cannot do anything unless everyone agrees.
Today, Bosnia-Herzegovina consists of two entities plus the District of Brcko. The Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina is further divided into ten cantons. It is a country with thirteen constitutions, thirteen councils of ministers, and three state presidents. This is a country that spends, according to International Community statistics, 64 percent of its GDP on its politicians and its bureaucrats--compared to 43 percent in Slovenia and 31 percent in Albania.
Again, I use this as an example of delayed solutions, of wrong approaches that must not be repeated. The complexity of the state and its functioning distract us from seeing the simple and tragic truth: its seeming inability to feed a population of only four million people.
The story of Dayton and Bosnia, sadly, reminds me of a medical mishap in an operating room. A surgery is performed on a patient butchered by his neighbor. The patient survives but the surgery is far from a success. As all the tendons and ligaments and tissues and blood vessels are not too well connected, he continues to have internal bleeding and cannot get off the operating table. Every so often, groups of doctors come in, prescribe painkillers, sedatives, or vitamins, and leave again. When the patient complains and asks for the original set of surgeons to return and operate again, he is told that if he needs another operation he needs to perform it himself, with the help of his neighbor. Our resident doctor (the high representative) has only the power of administering drugs--expensive, experimental, and approved on an individual basis.
Many international representatives say in confidence that the postoperative treatment does not work; it is a shame, they say, that our patient is poor and has no good health care plan that would allow him attention after the emergency room. Now that we have been removed from the high-risk list and there are fewer and fewer journalists by our bedside, we are just another organism on a life-support system. There is no longer anything spectacular or newsworthy about that. This is the reality. The opinions or rights of the patient are, in the end, of no great consequence.
Like other countries in transition faced by additional problems such as unemployment, the painful process of privatization, and attracting foreign investments, Bosnia-Herzegovina needs simple, coherent strategies. It is a comfort to me that Dayton is no longer considered the undisputable blueprint for the present, future, and past of this country. I welcome all talk of our need to surpass Dayton, our need for a pragmatic dialogue between all constituent peoples of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the international community.
"Help for self-help"
Countries in transition, just as those we call Third World countries, certainly need assistance, but the international community must be aware of the dangers of pursuing a paternalistic approach. Nor must it lose sight of the importance of what people in these countries can themselves change within their own communities, using models suitable for their specific realities. What is needed, therefore, is what the Germans so neatly call "help for self-help." We do not need only tractors and plows, we need education. We need opportunities for our young people, or we will have no future. Our youth do not wish simply to survive; they wish to see a future, a possibility of prosperity. It is most disturbing that many young people left Bosnia-Herzegovina between 1996 and 2001. Surveys show that 62 percent of those who have stayed would leave if given the chance. Close to 50 percent of the university staff has left over the last decade.
If you wish to help a poor country, do not simply give it enough to feed itself, but invest in its education system. Why is it so much easier to get a loan or a grant from international aid organizations to build a farm than to build a small research center? Ours is a small country whose greatest natural resources are its people. Invest in them, and the results will prove remarkable.
If the human race has a common project at all, I believe this would be it: the deep understanding that all of our rights are violated when a single person suffers, that democracy will never truly live until it lives for all. In today's world, there is no such thing as a local conflict.
Bosnia-Herzegovina certainly has a turbulent past, but this past it holds in common with the rest of Europe, whose history is marked more with war than with peace. Our future is ensured not by a claim that we have lived or today live in a world completely governed by justice, peace, and tolerance. Our future is ensured through our commitment to that world.
* In Dayton, Bosnia and Herzegovina was divided in two entities first named Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (51 percent of the territory) and the second named Republika Srpska (49 percent of the territory). The municipality of Brcko was by later arbitration declared as the District of Brcko.
©2005 World & I: Innovative Approaches to Peace
Dr. Ejup Ganic is the former president of the Federation of
Bosnia-Herzegovina and founder of the Sarajevo School of
Science and Technology.
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