Daniel Serwer: Is It Time for a Post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina?

Circle 99, May 23, 2021

Let me first say that it is a great pleasure to be back at Circle 99. Yes, I’ve been there before, in late 1995 or maybe early in 1996.

I was then Special Envoy for the Bosnian Federation, helping to construct its institutions and get them functioning, along with Michael Steiner, then a German diplomat.

Bosnia and I have come a long way since then. When I sit with friends drinking a coffee in Sniper Alley, I find it impossible to agree with their frequent declarations that nothing has changed.

Lots of things have obviously changed. I think what they mean is that they are disappointed in the changes.

Also for me, Bosnian politics too closely resembles war by other means: ethnically defined forces fighting a zero-sum game, each trying to enlist the support of powers outside Bosnia.

I’d like to start today by explaining why this is the case, then move on to my analysis of what is wrong and what needs to be done to set it right, despite the odds.

Notoriously, the Americans imposed the Dayton agreement on the warring parties of the 1990s.

That is true, but we imposed what the three warring parties wanted: a power-sharing arrangement among “constituent peoples,” one based on its own ethnically defined 49% of the territory and the two others sharing power in the remaining 51%.

Here it behooves me to explain why there was no third entity at Dayton.
After all, the Herzegovinian Croats were in a very strong position in 1995: they had the backing of Croatia, which had successfully retaken most of its Serb-occupied Krajina, commanded the HVO, and controlled the flow of arms to the Bosnian Army, which by August 1995 were advancing rapidly towards Banja Luka.
But President Tudjman, no great enlightenment figure, did not want Herzegovina inside his state or separated from Sarajevo, which would necessarily have meant a radicalized rump Muslim republic in central Bosnia.
He agreed with the Americans and Germans that was something to avoid. The Federation was the means of doing so.
By late 1994, when I first met with Herzeg-Bosna officials, Tudjman and Croatian Defense Minister Susak had removed the previous more radical, secessionist leadership of the Bosnian Croats and were pressuring them hard to participate constructively in the Federation.
I spent many days in Zagreb lining up the details of Tudjman’s and Susak’s support. They never asked for a third entity, which they realized was not in Croatia’s interest.
Fast forward to today: is a non-viable, radicalized, rump Muslim state or entity in central Bosnia a better idea today than it was in 1995? I think not.
It is no better an idea for Serbia than it is for Croatia, never mind for the many Bosniaks who identify as politically moderate Europeans, or the Americans, the UK, and the member states of the European Union.
At Dayton, the representatives of the three constituent peoples made their peace within a single sovereign state and agreed not only to share power but also to distribute it in a way that makes it difficult for anyone to gain power without identifying unequivocally with one of the constituent peoples and foreswearing support from the other two.
No wonder the ethnonationalist leaders were prepared to accept what the Americans imposed at Dayton: it was as close to a guarantee they could stay in power indefinitely as they could hope to get.
And no wonder Dragan Covic and Milorad Dodik want to strengthen the ethnonationalist hold on power.

So to those who are hoping for a post-Dayton Bosnia, my first word is one of warning: be careful of what you wish for.

The various non-papers tell you precisely what Covic and Dodik want. And who is Izetbegovic to object to the Green Garden, which had some appeal to his father during the war?

There are more ways of making things worse in Bosnia and Herzegovina than making them better, as the Mostar election agreement showed.

Electoral reform is a dangerous trap, full of technical issues that really matter in determining the outcome.

I’d much prefer to see constitutional reform first, in the direction of making Bosnia and Herzegovina a more liberal democratic state.

During the war, the President of the Federation, Kresimir Zubak, called me into his office one day and read me the riot act: one man one vote, he said, will never work in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He was correct in that moment. The war had convinced each of the constituent peoples that they would never get a fair shake from the other two.

Which is why Bosnia today has three presidents, two entities, houses of peoples, vital national interest vetoes, and dozens of other guarantees of group rights over and above individual rights.

But now it is more than 25 years later. Does Bosnia and Herzegovina need its elaborate and dysfunctional governing structures in order to protect Croats, Bosniaks, and Serbs as groups, or could it begin to dismantle those structures in favor of individual rights?

My answer would be yes. I think the group rights guaranteed at Dayton are now threatening the integrity and functionality of the state.

What Bosnia needs now is a shift of power away from the entities and cantons towards Sarajevo for some things and towards the municipalities for other things.

The “state” government in Sarajevo should have all the responsibility and authority required to negotiate and implement the EU’s acquis communautaire. It should set the rules of the game.

The municipalities, many of which have Croat or Serb majorities, should be the main providers of citizen services, with the budgets and authority required to do so effectively and efficiently.

The prerequisite for such a reform is to refocus the constitution away from protecting group rights and towards protecting individual rights.

But I confess what I think really doesn’t matter. I’m an American who likes the fact that as a member of a minority group and descendant of immigrants I can claim exactly the same rights as any other citizen, without reference to my ethnic group.

I interact much more often in my private life with my municipality, where my voice is more readily heard, than with the Federal government.

But in Bosnia and Herzegovina 25 years after the war, the choice is yours, not mine.

You can continue to fight your ethnic battles by political means for another 25 years, or you can choose to end what we call in English the consociationalism that has proven itself so dysfunctional in practice, even if it was necessary for peace.

I would note here that you are not alone in facing that choice: Lebanon, Iraq, and Israel—each in its own way—is facing a similar choice, whether to continue with ethnically based governance or begin to reward competence.

In all three of these Middle Eastern countries, people are taking to the streets to demand a change in the constitutional system in favor of individual rights and cross-ethnic and cross-sectarian political organization.

Therein lies a lesson: it can only be done if the citizens demand it. It is not enough for you here at Circle 99 to analyze and criticize.

Someone —one of you or someone else—needs to lead the way, backed by a mass movement of citizens demanding their voices be heard, organizing to ensure candidates emerge who represent them, and voting to end the monopoly power of the ethnic nationalists.

I occasionally hear the rumbling of such mass movements and electoral coalitions across ethnic lines in Bosnia: after the floods, when the plenums convened, in the cries of Justice for David and Dzenan.

So far though, they have failed so far to generate the required political weight, partly due to repression.

But what happened to Milosevic in Serbia and to Gruevski in Macedonia can happen in Bosnia: a politician secure in his hold on power and his control of the state apparatus—so secure in Milosevic’s case that he called early elections—can fall to the popular will.