This is an elegant analysis from my former US Ambassadorial colleague in Belgrade Bill Montgomery about the current state of mind of Republika Srpska, the ‘Serb’ Entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Bill argues that RS led by Prime Minister Dodik is pursuing a Montenegrin-style war of attrition aimed at making an eventual divorce of RS away from the rest of Bosnia seem inevitable and maybe even desirable.

Here’s something I wrote the other day:

There were in principle three ‘balanced’ ways to end the war in Bosnia:

  • One Country, Three Peoples, One Political Space:  no subdivisions on an ethnic basis, one person one vote, strong institutionalised arrangements to protect equality and minority rights
  • One Country, Three Peoples, Three Entities:  give each of the three rival ethnic communities (Bosniac/Muslim, Serb, Croat) some sort of territorial reassurance within an overall single confederal framework.
  • One Country, Three Peoples, Many Entities:  a Swiss-style canton system comprising a single polity, aiming to diffuse ethnic conflict.

The solution which made no philosophical sense was chosen at the Dayton Peace Conference in 1995: One Country, Three Peoples, Two Entities.  It emerged from a previous phase of the 1990s’ conflict when the Americans and Germans brought great pressure to bear on the Bosniacs/Muslims and Croats to stop fighting each other and join forces against the Serbs.

Under this settlement the Bosniacs and Croats dominating one Entity (the Federation) got too little and typically disagree, creating unaffordable bureaucracy at all levels. The Serbs dominating the other Entity (Republika Srpska) got too much…

As Bill says:

Ironically, the Dayton Agreement itself provides the “weapons” to passively resist the establishment of a strong Bosnian state. On the one hand, it clearly gives the RS definite powers and authorities and the ability to frustrate the plans of the other ethnic groups.

On the other, it is a totally unworkable document whose dysfunctional nature reinforces the failure of the Bosnian state.

The Dayton BH Constitution is a classic piece of work for those interested in short-term v long-term policy outcomes.

Dick Holbrooke railroaded this through partly because he felt that only brutal bulldozer tactics would bring about a BH deal after so much mayhem and international disagreement. Also no doubt to give his boss President Clinton a significant international policy success

But it was achieved at a price

The Constitution features obvious ‘internal’ political and philosophical incoherence (well, obvious to me as a Balkan expert of sorts)

It was a deal signed only by the people who had made the problems (Milosevic/Tudjman/Izetbegovic) with no ‘social democratic’ voices allowed anywhere near. The people who had run the conflict were just not the people to build a new peace

And because it was done in such a rush, no proper thought was given to exactly how it would be implemented on the ground. Hence the awful exodus a few months later of thousands of Serbs from Sarajevo, pushed by vengeful Bosniacs/Muslims and ‘pulled’ by the odious RS leadership who wanted the Serbs to be as separate as possible.

Bosnian Serb leader Krajisnik (later sent down by ICTY for war crimes) cynically but not altogether inaccurately used to tell me that Sarajevo was the “button holding the two sides of the Bosnian jacket together”. The absence of this integrating human element in the country’s capital is a big reason for Bosnia’s continuing underperformance now.

There it is. Over a decade later these contradictions are slowly compounding up.

And we see from the examples of the Kosovo Albanians and Djukanovic’s Montenegrins alike just how a steely sustained focus can bring results when there is uncertain international resolve.

Alas the Bosniac leadership have tended to make this difficult situation worse:

“The [Serb] nation may not be guilty, but it is responsible,” Silajdzic started his response to the statement that one cannot blame all Serbs. And then he set off into a truly shocking speech about “differences between Bosniaks and Serbs” that boil down to the fact that “we” have not while “they” (Serbs, of course) have been raised as fascists and criminals; consequently this is not a first genocide of Bosniaks and everything must be done that it is the last…

It was immediately obvious (on everyone’s faces, even Hadzifejzovic’s in Sarajevo studio) that with those words and repeated emphasis on “criminal upbringing” [of Serbs] Silajdzic crossed some sort of invisible, but alarming line between what is permissible and what is not, regardless of political, national or other differences…

Tadic in Belgrade only had to make sure not to miss the opportunity. He asked, softly and without raising his voice: “Who will you make peace with if you reject all Serbs as criminals?”

Indeed.

The point being that having opened the Balkan Pandora’s Box of Precedents, we can not be surprised when they fly all over the place, sometimes in directions we do not expect – or want.