Back from Brussels.

Here is a short article by me in the Independent today about Ejup Ganic.

It’s always a pleasure to get material into a British national newspaper – work published there pops up all over the planet. But the end product is not necessarily what was sent in.

In this case the article one was tapped out on my iPhone at v short notice to help meet the Independent‘s deadline. For space reasons they omitted several passages:

That said, the Bosniacs too have shown themselves unable and unwilling to confront massacres committed by their side. Hard questions are being asked in Sarajevo as to why the Dobrovoljacka St killings have not been fully and authoritatively investigated long before now, including Mr Ganic’s own role.

Why has Belgrade launched this attempt to nab Mr Ganic now? The issue has been rumbling on for years  below the Western media radar screen.

 

President Tadic in Belgrade is trying to get passed in Parliament a resolution condemning the Srebrenica massacre. It does him no harm with Serbia public opinion to show that he is making serious efforts to see brought to justice people said to have committed war crimes against Serbs. Further bad feelings between Bosnia‘s unhappy communities? Collateral damage. 

 

Mr Ganic will have all the resources he needs to fight extradition. Belgrade too will strive to insist that he be handed over, although wiser Serb heads will be wondering quite how to manage an eventual and perhaps improbable extradition success.


If the issue is not resolved quickly – perhaps on an ingenious jurisdictional or procedural technicality which allows speedy Dr Ganic’s release and return to Sarajevo – a long and brutal legal battle will ensue. Just what neither Bosnia nor Serbia need.

 

A ‘pro-Serb’ reader in Canada has contacted me to remonstrate with some of the points made in the Independent article as published:

 

I have read your piece  "Bosnia will be the real loser in this messy legal battle" publish in the Independent and must disagree with you. Given your post as  Ambassador to Bosnia you must be much better informed about who was who during the war in the former Yugoslavia and who did what to whom from 1991-1999.

 

What was the role of the UK, the USA and other NATO countries in arming and training Muslims  in Bosnia (whom you so kindly call Bosniaks! ) and bombing Serbs. Coming from the UK, whose country was one of the major perpetrators of the crimes committed against the Serbs during the 90′ s war, I would argue that you do not have any right to talk about morality…

 

Ho hum.

 

He links to this piece by Grey Falcon which has nothing good to say about Ganic but makes this claim:

 

He was, however, a loyal associate of Alija Izetbegovic, an Islamic revolutionary who schemed, lied and forced his way into becoming the leader of Bosnia‘s Muslims in the early 1990s.

 

Ganic ran for the then-Yugoslav republic’s presidency as an "other", declaring himself an ethnic "Yugoslav", thus exploiting a loophole in electoral rules and giving Izetbegovic an extra vote in the seven-member collective.

 

One of the reasons the current Bosnian constitution has strict and even discriminatory rules governing presidential elections is to prevent just such a scenario from being repeated.

 

This is an interesting (if not necessarily true) point.

 

The new Constitution for Bosnia as agreed at Dayton indeed made provision for a new three-person Presidency based on strict ‘ethnic’ criteria: Bosniac and Croat members have to be elected from the Federation, and the Serb member from Republika Srpska.

 

You can see that this formula leaves no space for ‘Bosnians’ to have any role at the top. A person with a Serbian mother, Bosniak father and born in the mainly Croat areas of Bosnia who fits no one category and so calls himself a Bosnian is disqualified for running for President.

 

This is not only discriminatory. It is stupid, as it compels everyone towards strict ethnic categories and disincentivises cooperative Bosnian-ness.

 

Fair enough – other European countries are also strict in this sense. I gather that Belgium requires everyone to be allocated an ethnic category at birth(!).

 

But as Bosnia tries to work out how best to reform its constitution, some space surely has to be created to let Bosnians have a role?