THE DAYTON ACCORD, OR DESIGN OF PROTECTORATES
Elena Ponomareva
en.fondsk.ru
26.11.2008
Thirteen years ago, on 21st November, 1995, there was signed the
General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H),
also known as the Dayton Accords. Since then the world witnessed many
conflicts, and the mechanisms first applied at Wright-Patterson Air
Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, were used more than once to settle some
of them.
In the 1980s the notorious peace-building became an integral part of
the international peace-keeping operations. First this strategy was
used in Angola in late 1980s. According to the former UN Secretary
General Boutros Ghali, "peace-building was aimed at establishing new
formal institutions to peacefully settle political, social, national
and religious conflicts". Then Ghali did not mention the most crucial
thing: those "new formal institutions" were established and controlled
not by the peoples. The United States, the major player of the world’s
capitalist system, did this under cover of UN, EU and NATO.
*** B&H within its present-day borders appeared on the world map
in 1946. Then it became one of the six constituent republics of the
Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, which in 1963 changed its
name for the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). B&H was
the central republic of SFRY with mixed Slavic population. According
to the last census in Yugoslavia in 1991, the Muslims made up
43,7% of the population, while the Serbs and the Croats – 31,4%
and 17,3% respectively. The whole population of the republic was
4 360,000 people, 240,000 (or 5,5%) of whom identified themselves
before the civil war as Yugoslavians. According to the reports
from the Parliamentary Group for Population and Development of B&H,
from 1996 to 2006 more than 120,000 people, mainly youth, left the
country. There are no official statistics on the number and structure
of the population of B&H.
But in accordance with unofficial data, 3,6 million people are
currently living in the republic, which is 82,6% from the prewar
population (2,2 million in the Federation of B&H and 1,4 million in
the Republika Srpska).
The war of 1992-1995 took lives of 160,000 Muslims, leaving more than
a million without shelter. The Croats lost 30,000 in dead (400,000
became refugees), and 25,000 were dead in Serbia with 300,000 people
becoming refugees there.
I did no mistake when I said that Slavic people lived in B&H. According
to the census, the term "Muslim" first appeared there in 1961 to
describe not religious but ethnic origin. Some people wrote in the
forms they were atheists but of Muslim origin. In the 1971 census
people used the word "Muslim" to mean their belonging to an exact
ethnic group. That mutation of a national identity began during
Ottoman ru le, when ethnic Serbs of B&H lived through mild economic
Islamization. Under Socialism, the leadership of Yugoslavia placed its
stake on internationalism and announced that each nation had the right
for self-determination. They deliberately encouraged people from other
ethnic groups to live on the originally Serbian territories. After
the WW II Serbian refugees were banned from returning to Kosovo and
northern Macedonia. In B&H there appeared a new ethnic group which
members identified themselves as a separate nation in early 1990s. The
situation with Bosnian Muslims shows us how within 30-40 years the
foundations of historical unity and responsibility for the security
of future generation may be eliminated.
A cruel civil war between three nationalities- Serbs, Croats
and Muslims- was caused mainly by the Communist regime in
Belgrade. Firstly, the borders were artificial (B&H not as a state
but as a geographic name). Secondly, under Socialism the whole system
of education and religious upbringing was aimed at making the Serbs,
who then felt strong Turkish influence, identify themselves as Muslims
and non-Serbs.
Thanks to the decentralization of the federal power in 1970s, when many
issues were under jurisdiction of republican institutions, Yugoslavia
saw the revival of Islam. Belgrade actively developed cooperation with
the Arab world and its close ties with some radical Arab movements
affected the situation in the Muslim enclaves- in Bosnia and Kosovo. In
1980s B&H saw a real mosque building boom. Each year 250 young Bosnian
men received higher Islamic education in the Middle East and then most
of them came back home inspired by the laws of radical Islam. Iran
also actively implemented its policies in Yugoslavia (Tehran provided
financial support to the first president of B&H, Alija Izetbegovic).
Interests of the West and the Muslim world collided in B&H, when
Yugoslavia faced the crisis of federalism. Bosnia turned into a ‘firing
ground’ where the protectorate model could be tested. The alternate
coexistence of peoples, who were taught to hate former neighbors,
resulted in a civil war.
Both the West and the Islamic states actively supported the
Croatian-Muslim federation in their fight against Bosnian Serbs, and
when the victory of the Republika Srpska (RS) was obvious, the peace
builders openly interfered in the process. After bombing the Serbian
territories and forcing Belgrade not to accept help from the RS, the
US suggested a plan to "freeze" the conflict and leave the borders of
B&H intact. The Dayton constitution, adopted without participation
of the Bosnian Serbs actually turned B&H into a protectorate. Later
on the same thing happened in Kosovo: stirring up national hatred,
escalation of conflict, military operation, deployment of NATO bases
and peacekeeping forces, the adoption of a ‘peace’ plan as the basis
of future20Constitution. As a result- the total control over economic,
political and military strategic spheres of the region.
*** The modern B&H consists of two entities- Federation of
Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska, with its own
governing institutions. There is also the Bosnian Presidium and
Parliament. However, the Dayton Agreement suggests that the UN Security
Council appointed a High Representative for Bosnia. An Office of
the High Representative (HR) deals with the major legislative and
executive procedures and takes measures if the implementation of the
Dayton Accord is not satisfactory (Appendix 10).
The Bonn ministerial conference, which had been convened in 2003 to
review specifically the implementation of the Dayton peace accord in
Bosnia, extended the authorities of the HR. Now the HR envoy (on 30
June, 2007, Miroslav Lajcak took office as the envoy) is authorized to
dismiss officials, whose view on this or that issue differs from that
of the international mediator, and replace those holding elected posts
with his own candidates. If the sides fail to achieve a compromise, the
HR envoy can introduce temporary legal measures. Apart from this, there
is also a rule how to arrange political, economical and other kind of
decisions, which is obligatory even for the ambassadors working in B&H.
The "peace builders" expect Miroslav Lajcak, who replaced a German
diplomat Christian Schwartz-Schilling, to make all the20preparations
to start the revision of the Dayton constitution: "Now Bosnia should
seek EU membership, but with the present-day constitution it appears
to be quite difficult. For me it is important that the Constitution
was unanimously adopted by all political groups".
The main idea here is to establish a new unitary state that would
be however ruled from abroad instead of the federation with strong
Serbian influence.
The revision of the Bosnian constitutions is closely linked to the
Kosovo issue. Unlike Kosovo’s Albanians, Bosnian Serbs, of course,
have more reasons for proclaiming independence. The question is how to
persuade Bosnian Serbs to renounce this little independence they have.
First of all, it is necessary to dissolve (the peace builders say
"reform") the police, the army and the security agencies. Secondly,
to influence the population psychologically and form a steady sense
of guilt (remember Karadzic arrest and his handover to the war crimes
tribunal in The Hague, the search for Mladic, Muslim genocide charges,
etc). Thirdly, to break all ties between the Serbs in Bosnia and
Belgrade, so that the former thought they were fighting for freedom
and treated the latter as traitors, who agreed to cooperate with
the West for "hoping to benefit from it", as the famous Serbian
novelist Milorad Pavic put it. Fourthly, to form a "fifth column"
among the Bosnian Ser bs. As Joseph Brodsky said, "to buy is easier
than kill". And, finally, to make Republika Srpska economically weak.
Guided by the research published in the "Modern Political Atlas"1,
we now may define the so-called "national identity index", which
depends on the following factors:
– foreign share in national GDP
– the way inner conflicts influence the country’s political regime
– external debt; sovereign nationhood and its time frameworks
– scale of inner conflicts and number of victims
– the way the conflicts affect territorial division
– presence of foreign military contingents on the territory
– national currency anchor regime
– the role of dominating ethnos in the country
So, taking into consideration these factors, the authors of the Atlas
placed B&H at the 174th position, close to the Solomon and Marshall
Islands, Armenia and the Republic of Equatorial Guinea (the whole
list features 192 countries).
When I watch the way the international relations are developing and
analyze the evolution of the political system in the Balkans, when
I see how people of the former Yugoslavia change their social and
political priorities, I have no illusions about the future of B&H. The
"peace builders", who yet have no opponents, insist that B&H must be
a unitary territory, with no attributes of autonomy. Time will show
what will come of it.