In the past month, TransConflict has been pleased to welcome a host of new members of the Global Coalition for Conflict Transformation, which works to uphold and implement the Principles of Conflict Transformation.

These new members from a variety of countries are:

• Belfast Interface Project - Northern Ireland – is a membership organisation committed to informing and creating effective regeneration strategies in Belfast’s interface areas, in order to ensure that they are free of tension, intimidation and violence both within and between communities;
• EPOS International Mediating and Negotiating Operational Agency - Italy – aims to contribute to the creation of stability in conflict areas, maintain stability in stable areas, in those at risk and those which have recently reached stability;
• Research and Documentation Centre Sarajevo - Bosnia and Herzegovina – established with the aim to collect documents and establish facts about the war and war atrocities in Bosnia and Herzegovina during 1992-1995;
• Youth Resource Centre (ORC) Tuzla - Bosnia and Herzegovina – works to empower and strengthen youth organizations and informal youth groups, especially in small communities, in the belief that believes youngsters possess the power to prevent possible future conflicts;
• Peace Academy Foundation - Bosnia and Herzegovina - sees peacebuilding as increasing the capacities of people and institutions to manage diversities through conflict transformation, and avoiding structural violence by investigating and analyzing the causes of war, opening perspectives and (re)establishing interrupted and destroyed relationships among people, and between ethnic groups, of the former-Yugoslavia.
• Syri i Vizionit – Kosovo – aims to promote local democracy and the participation of people in Kosovo. In its continuous efforts for democratic practices, Syri i Vizionit gave a special role to promotion of good governance, accountability, transparency and public participation in decision-making.
• Jump – Serbia – provides young people with an opportunity to get actively involved in developing their own community. Jump’s strategy is based upon upholding human rights, peacebuilding, environmental protection and increasing mobility.
• Association of War Affected Women - Sri Lanka – was established in 2000 to create space for war affected women specifically mothers and wives of servicemen missing in action, and of those who are missing, to come together across the divide to work for peace;
• Initiative for Political and Conflict Transformation - Sri Lanka – aims is to contribute to a process of political and conflict transformation in Sri Lanka. INPACT’s work focuses on addressing the grievances and symptoms of dissatisfaction felt by groups of people who believe that their interests and rights as groups or individuals are not being guaranteed;
• United For Peace Against Conflict International - Ivory Coast – contributes to peacebuilding, peacemaking and peacekeeping activities, teaching about the causes and consequences of conflict and proposing practical transformative measures in order to enhance the adoption – and practice – of culture of peace and non-violence;
• The Populace Foundation – Uganda - Uganda – promotes reconciliation and peace-building amongst conflict-affected communities in North and North-Eastern Uganda.

For a complete list of members of the Global Coalition for Conflict Transformation, please click here. If you are interested in applying to join the Global Coalition, then please click here.

If you are interested in supporting conflict transformation projects and trainings through the Global Coalition, then you can make a secure donation on-line through the BigGive by clicking here!

Josip Glaurdic responds to a review of his new book, ‘The Hour of Europe: Western Powers and the Breakup of Yugoslavia’, by David B. Kanin, whose own response is also presented below.

By Josip Glaurdic

The twentieth anniversary of Yugoslavia’s breakup came and went without nearly the attention it warranted in the West. Perhaps that is fitting for the crisis which was originally allowed to simmer and boil over by the neglect of the Western powers. My book, ‘The Hour of Europe: Western Powers and the Breakup of Yugoslavia (Yale University Press, 2011)’, was an attempt to change that trend of indifference, so I am particularly grateful to Prof. Kanin for “lending me a hand” with his thoughtful and knowledgeable review. I am also grateful for his praise, but – in the good tradition of review responses – I have decided to move straight to his substantive critique. After all, that is the best way we can build a constructive dialogue and learn from each other.

It would perhaps be most useful to begin with Prof. Kanin’s suggestion that my analysis lacks “an assessment of why whatever forces – whether military, liberal, or ideologically ‘Yugoslav’ – failed to coalesce as events spun downward.” This is a very good question, which we can answer only after answering two related questions – which (credible) forces are we talking about and when?

If we are talking about the period between the decision of Slobodan Milosevic to marry his brand of socialism with Serbian nationalism sometime in mid-1987 and the collapse of the League(s) of Communists and its/their various defeats at the polls in 1990 – then my book answers that question at least implicitly because it deals extensively with the only credible force that could have stopped Milosevic’s march: the League of Communists itself. The book, thus, discusses the reasons why the rest of the Communist elite failed to collectively respond to Milosevic’s ousting of Ivan Stambolic (they did not want to meddle in Serbia’s internal affairs and they thought Milosevic was just a grey, controllable bureaucrat); it explains why nothing was done once the rallies of the “anti-bureaucratic revolution” started in Serbia (again, because it would have been meddling in the internal affairs of Serbia, because all republican Communist elites used their own nationalisms for the purposes of mobilization, and ultimately because some of them – like the JNA and Macedonia, for example – actually agreed with Milosevic); it suggests a set of plausible explanations for why what was done was done once the “anti-bureaucratic revolution” started to spill over beyond the borders of Serbia (new and weak Communist leaderships in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, miscalculations and spinelessness on the federal level, etc.).

Ultimately, however, the main point is that the Yugoslav Communists were deeply divided over what really constituted a “Yugoslav” platform and, besides, they derived their legitimacy from within their republics. For, say, the Croatian Communist leaders of 1989 – who were all of clearly Yugoslavist orientation – to reach out to someone beyond the borders of their republic in order to build an anti-Milosevic coalition, they would have needed courage, enough likeminded partners, an institutional pathway to oust Milosevic, and real payoffs for such a move in the form of increased legitimacy of their rule. They had none of that. As my book demonstrates, their feeble – but still clearly Yugoslavist – response to Milosevic’s campaign was actually the reason for their electoral defeat.

If, on the other hand, Prof. Kanin’s question is referring to the period between the downfall of the League of Communists in early 1990 and the breakup of the country and war in the second half of 1991 – then the answer is slightly different, partly because we are dealing with different actors, and partly because of increased importance of international signals to the Yugoslav players. As my book argues, the only scenario for a possible survival of the Yugoslav state during this period was dependent on the success of the federal government of Ante Markovic, which commenced its program of shock therapy in December 1989, and the success of the plan for the Yugoslav confederation officially proposed by Slovenia and Croatia in the fall of 1990. Since Prof. Kanin devotes some attention to my treatment of both Markovic and the confederal proposal, it may be useful if I answer his aforementioned question by responding to his critique of how these two episodes were dealt with in my book.

Prof. Kanin suggests that I am minimizing the role Ante Markovic played during this period, that I am ignoring his popularity, devaluing the success of his reforms, and taking him to task for “joining Milosevic in condemning Slovene and Croat movements toward independence after the disastrous Congress of Yugoslavia’s League of Communists in January 1990.” However, none of those suggestions are correct. Ante Markovic gets an extensive treatment in my book, from his appointment in early 1989 and the creation of his economic program (pp. 61-66), to his failure to get Western support (pp. 67-69, 80-81, 121-122), his participation in the elections of 1990 (pp. 102, 115), or his role in the war in Slovenia (pp. 169-170, 173, 177-178, 191-192). I also explicitly mention the level of his popular support (p. 120, p. 344n3). And I treat his reforms fairly, in light of their actual success as measured by a variety of economic indicators (presented in Table 5.1 on p. 122) and in light of the response they garnered in the West. Interestingly, I am not the one who termed Markovic’s reforms “illusory”, as Prof. Kanin suggests. It was the CIA, whose National Intelligence Estimate from October 1990 (and which I quote on p. 109) claimed that the reform achievements of Markovic’s government were “mostly illusory”.

As far as taking Ante Markovic to task is concerned, I take Yugoslavia’s last prime minister to task for three things: for harbouring irrational hopes throughout the crisis that the West would bail him out (p. 68), for aiding and abetting the Yugoslavist wing of the JNA in the war in Slovenia, and for the obstructive role his government played in early Western diplomatic efforts during the war in Croatia (as, for example, in the efforts of the CSCE, p. 187). Those criticisms aside, however, I clearly acknowledge the federal prime minister as “the only political actor who presented a pan-Yugoslav alternative to Milosevic” at the turn of the decade and as someone who may have had a chance to neutralize the Serbian leader (p.69). The problem for Markovic, however – and here lies the answer to Prof. Kanin’s question of why pro-Yugoslav forces did not coalesce around the federal prime minister – is that his reforms were doomed to fail without real financial assistance from the West – assistance Markovic never received.

One could also take Ante Markovic to task – though I do not do that in my book – for failing to support the confederal proposal of Slovenia and Croatia, which was officially presented in October 1990. Prof. Kanin suggests that the confederal proposal was not a truly workable plan, but merely a “slogan” which fooled some Westerners. He also suggests that the Slovenes were not intent on reforming Yugoslavia into a confederation, but were only interested in keeping their money. Moreover, Prof. Kanin questions not only whether the Slovene Communist leadership was committed to the idea of a Yugoslav confederation, but also whether it was committed to the idea of liberal democratization, and he asserts I provide no evidence for such claims in my book.

It is certainly true that the bulk of national/nationalist mobilization in Slovenia in the late 1980s, which was condoned and even fostered by the republic’s Communist leadership, was centred on Ljubljana’s financial contributions to the federal budget. This is hardly surprising, considering the economic environment of extreme austerity akin, perhaps, to what Greece has to go through today. To say, however, that the Slovenes wanted to keep more of their money and that they were committed to the idea or reforming Yugoslavia along confederal lines is not mutually exclusive. On the contrary: the confederation was exactly the institutional device which was – among other things – to allow the Slovenes to keep more of their earnings at home. Whether the confederal proposal of October 1990 was practicable or, as Prof. Kanin suggests, “there is no evidence the Slovenes or anyone else actually considered how such a construction would work” is debatable. The proposal was modelled on the European Community and contained a number of different options which were ultimately to be agreed upon in peaceful negotiations of all six republics. The main point is that this platform for negotiations did not “fool” any Westerners, as Prof. Kanin suggests. As my book demonstrates, the confederal proposal was met with basically uniform derision and disregard from the West in late 1990 and early 1991 (pp. 123-124, 137). Only after the Belgrade protests of March 1991 and the violence in Croatia later that April and May, did the Western governments begin to signal their possible acceptance of a confederal reformation of Yugoslavia, but by that time it was too late. It is rather ironic that a number of provisions of the confederal plan found their way into the proposals of the Carrington Conference in the fall of 1991 – after thousands of dead and wounded, and several hundred thousand refugees in the war in Croatia. Had the confederal plan received Western backing and diplomatic involvement in the fall of 1990 when it needed it, it is entirely possible that war could have been avoided, and that some semblance of a common Yugoslav structure could have been preserved.

When it comes to the question of evidence of Slovenia’s commitment to liberal democracy and to Yugoslavia’s confederal future, I can only recommend that Prof. Kanin re-reads the relevant chapters of my book. Is the fact that the leaders of the Slovenian League of Communists took Mladina’s side in its clash with the JNA in 1988 (pp. 27-29) not evidence of their clear choice to defend that quintessentially liberal idea of the freedom of the press? Are the Slovenian constitutional amendments of 1989, which abandoned the Party’s leading role in society and extended the rights of Slovenian citizens in areas such as freedom of assembly, freedom of movement, freedom of religion, right to privacy, and freedom for organized participation in politics (pp. 54-56), also not evidence of a commitment to a liberal-democratic transformation? Is the fact that the Slovenian state-run media and the still ruling League of Communists supported Markovic’s reform program in spite of, as the Ljubljana daily Delo put it, the federal prime minister’s “inability to resist the discreet charms of centralization” (p. 65), not evidence of Slovenia’s commitment to a common Yugoslav future? Is the official platform of the League of Communists of Slovenia for the Fourteenth Congress of the federal Party organization, which – in the words of Milan Kucan – was the platform “undoubtedly for Yugoslavia: a voluntary state of equal republics, free and equal nations, a democratic community of free citizens which measures its socialist content and existence by the criteria of a European quality of life… not a Yugoslavia as an extended Serbia to which – according to its wishes – others can be joined” (p. 70) – is this platform not evidence of a still-present commitment to Slovenia’s future in a reformed and democratized Yugoslavia? Are the proposals put forward by the Slovene delegation at the Fourteenth Congress, which included a series of human rights amendments such as the ban on political trials and torture, and which were defeated by Milosevic’s sizeable bloc in the Party (p. 71), not a sign of the commitment of Slovenia’s Communists to liberal democratization? Last, but not least, is the fact that Slovenia was the first republic to call and hold democratic elections, after which the ruling Communists peacefully surrendered their political offices, not evidence of a commitment to liberal democratization? Prof. Kanin is certainly correct in stating that the Slovenes used their financial upper hand in an attempt to negotiate a better deal with the federal centre and that they had used it for years. They were, however, hardly alone in employing such methods.

The case of Slovenian liberalization and democratization is a good introduction to my response to another important critique by Prof. Kanin – the one regarding my supposed inaccurate use of the term Realpolitik to describe the policies of the Western powers. Prof. Kanin uses the example of Bismarck and his ability to mould the European order according to Prussia’s interests to draw a distinction with the Western leaders of the 1980s and 1990s who were operating “in the thrall of inertia”. None of them, as Prof. Kanin argues, deserve the same label of Realpolitiker that belonged to a statesman such as Bismarck.

It is interesting that Prof. Kanin uses Bismarck’s example to challenge my use of the term Realpolitik, because it was exactly the old Chancellor who was often quoted by the Western anti-interventionists who argued – as he did a century earlier – that “The whole of the Balkans is not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier.” This quote indeed captures the essence of Western Realpolitik when it comes to the breakup of Yugoslavia. Political realism in international relations is primarily concerned with power (derived from military or economic capacity) and the pursuit of stability. It has no place for ethical or ideological concerns. So, what would the quintessential Realpolitiker have done, had he been in some position of power in the West and confronted with the Yugoslav crisis? Well, he would most likely have noted the dwindling importance of Yugoslavia in the European geopolitical system of the late 1980s and he would have wanted it to remain quiet in order to devote his attention to more pressing interests further up north. He would have had little understanding for the liberalization and democratization agenda of Yugoslavia’s north-western republics, or for the clamouring for human rights by the Kosovo Albanians. He would, on the other hand, most likely have supported those who claimed to be fighting for the country’s preservation and centralization, especially since they happened to be wielding the biggest stick.

As my book repeatedly demonstrates, that was exactly the policy pursued by the Western powers until real war broke out in the summer of 1991. Inertia did play a large role, as Prof. Kanin rightly points out, but it was not the only, or even the most important, factor explaining Western policy. To get back to the case of Slovenian liberalization and democratization – inertia alone obviously cannot explain the fact that the Yugoslav Army received Western signals of support for its possible (and contemplated) intervention in Slovenia at the peak of the Mladina affair in 1988 (p. 28-29), as well as during the crisis with the Slovenian constitutional amendments in 1989 (p. 60). Just as inertia alone could not explain a host of other Western policies toward Yugoslavia during the period covered in my book: from the lack of real Western condemnation of the violence against the Kosovo Albanians in early 1989 (with the notable exception of the US Congress) (pp. 39-42); to Cutileiro’s and Carrington’s blackmail of Alija Izetbegovic with the military might of Serbia and the Bosnian Serbs, and with the withholding of the international recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in March 1992 (pp. 294-300).

The important thing to note is that the foreign policy apparatuses of all Western powers – including Germany – subscribed to this rationale until real war broke out in the summer of 1991. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung may have been making a clear distinction between Yugoslavia’s “democratic northwest” and “Communist Belgrade” (as did a number of other press houses elsewhere in the West), but such distinctions did not have any real effect on Germany’s policy toward Yugoslavia. What changed Bonn’s outlook on the crisis were the extreme violence and the clear aggression, first of the JNA on Slovenia, and then of Serbia on Croatia. As I argue in the concluding chapter of my book (p. 307),

The nature and the aims of the Serbian aggression galvanized some of the most deeply ingrained principled ideas within the German foreign policy community: the idea of peaceful self-determination (which had been the basis for Germany’s reunification), the idea of strong anti-expansionism and anti-irredentism (which stemmed from Germany’s own World War II traumas), and the idea of a strong commitment to the growing capability of European multilateral institutions (which was the foundation of Germany’s post–World War II foreign policy). It was Milosevic’s challenge to these three principled ideas which shifted the spotlight of German foreign policy makers away from their material interests in the continuing existence of Yugoslavia – and if any country had real material interests in the perpetuation of the Yugoslav federation, it was Germany – to the moral interests of self-determination for Yugoslavia’s republics and Europe’s strong resistance to Serbia’s expansionism.

The point is that Germany’s policy shift cannot be, as Prof. Kanin does, viewed outside the context of the extreme violence which was unleashed on Croatia and was threatened to be unleashed on Bosnia and Herzegovina. Prof. Kanin’s suggestion that Germany pursued the policy of recognition of Slovenia and Croatia without consideration for what would happen for the rest of the federation is false. As my book shows, Germany had a clear preference for the recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as Slovenia and Croatia, but was forced to take a back seat due to the intense criticism it was subjected to, primarily by Britain and France. Unsurprisingly, and unfortunately, the Western diplomatic, humanitarian, and military effort in Bosnia and Herzegovina thus reverted back to the very same mistakes which marred its inglorious beginnings in Slovenia and Croatia. Had my book been longer than the already lengthy 432 pages, and had it continued into the Bosnian war, the analysis would have not only shown Milosevic repeatedly hoodwinking the Westerners, as Prof. Kanin suggests. It would have shown a long record of ultimately unsuccessful Western struggles to shake off their impulses of Realpolitik and appeasement – impulses which culminated with what Prof. Kanin rightfully labels the needless mistake of Dayton.

Dr. Josip Glaurdic is Junior Research Fellow at Clare College, University of Cambridge. He earned his PhD in Political Science in 2009 at Yale University.

An immediate response by David B. Kanin:

Josip,

Thank you very much for taking the time to consider my review and respond to it. I am just about to get on a plane to Istanbul and then other places, so I hope you will not be offended by this very quick response.

First, you mischaracterize just a bit my comments on your treatment of Ante Markovic. In fact, I believe you gave him the right amount of attention and only would quibble with minor points of what you say about him. In fact, I meant to use your appropriate consideration of his shortcomings and failures to take a shot at those who have built up a mythology that he was a would-be liberal alternative to Milosevic and the others who brought Yugoslavia down.

When it comes to Slovenia, the issue is not whether its leaders were sincere about a society more open than Milosevic’s Serbia. The issue is whether – even before Milosevic came to power – they were sincere in their commitment to maintaining Yugoslavia at all. I believe they were not – they knew no re-tinkered “confederation” would hold together and prepared the ground carefully and over time to get out. You believe otherwise – I look forward to more exchanges with you on this point. In my view, part of the problem here is – as I wrote in my review – your narrow focus (1987-1992) just does not cover enough ground to consider the context and follow-on impact of your spot-on assessment of Western disarray and contradictory policies.

As to Bismarck – I agree he knew little about the Balkans, which is why he kept his country out of the region and worried about the implications of how Russia and Austro-Hungary played out their rivalry in the region. I must confess a little disappointment that your comments focused on Bismarck more than my critique of your treatment of Genscher and German policy in 1990-2.

On the later issue, I agree with you entirely that Germany’s policy shift cannot be considered separately from the context of the violence unleashed on Croatia (but not just Croatia). I disagree with your book’s contention that the Germans put the same priority on Bosnia’s independence as on Croatia’s – if that were the case they would not have been ready to drop the issue in reaction to the chaos in the policies of other Europeans until the Americans belatedly stepped in.

These are details, albeit not all minor ones. I want to stress again how valuable I believe your book is – I very much look forward to learning from the fruits of your future research. If I can ever be of any assistance to you, please let me know.

David B. Kanin is an adjunct professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University and a former senior intelligence analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Having realized that the north cannot simply be conquered, the Quint might finally be ready to recognize that something more than the bare outline of the Ahtisaari Plan may be required to unlock the status dispute.

By Gerard M. Gallucci

Signs have been building over the past few months that conditions for finding a compromise solution for north Kosovo might be ripening. Since 2008, the Quint – through KFOR, EULEX and the ICO – had been allowing and supporting unilateral (i.e., not negotiated) efforts to impose Kosovo Albanian returns and institutions across the Ibar River. Successful, largely peaceful, resistance of the northern Kosovo Serbs had prevented all efforts to accomplish this. KFOR seemed to understand the situation ahead of others, perhaps because it was put on the front line of trying to take down citizen barricades and corral the northerners into using “official” boundary crossings manned by Kosovo customs. After last September, KFOR refused to confront demonstrators with armed violence and began treating northern local leaders as credible interlocutors. While still refusing to commit itself to status neutral actions in the north, EULEX eventually worked out a modus operandi with the northern Kosovo Serbs that allowed them limited access in the north while keeping any Kosovo Albanian officials at the crossings in their containers. Even the ICO has come around to understanding that the problem of the north is not caused by “radicals” or “criminals” but arises because the people there just do not want to be ruled by Pristina.

In the last days, the Pristina press has been discussing international “pressures” on the Kosovo government to accept talking with credible northern Serb leaders about what to do next. The Kosovo government – and its international friends – are emitting their usual noises about borders that cannot be changed, about Belgrade having a limited role in any discussions and about simply implementing Ahtisaari. Some officials are also renewing the charge that it is their internationals who have failed in capturing the north by not having done enough to enforce Kosovo “rule of law” there. But such is to be expected before a possible tough negotiation. One sign that the Quint may be serious about Pristina preparing for negotiations is their allowing Ramush Haradinaj to return from the Hague. Like Nixon going to China, he may be the leader to take Kosovo forward to a historical settlement with Serbia.

It is an historical settlement between Belgrade and Pristina that the Quint now seems to most desire. The EU has a full plate with the Euro crisis. The US wants to bring its troops home. They both would rather not be in Kosovo forever. An agreement between Serbia and Kosovo on status – even if it doesn’t immediately include full recognition – would allow them to leave gracefully. Having realized that the north cannot simply be conquered, the Quint might finally be ready to recognize that something more than the bare outline of the Ahtisaari Plan may be required to unlock the status dispute.

The next government of Serbia probably will be pretty much the same as the last. DS and the Socialists will form the core and most observers expect Tadic himself to return as president. Whether it is Tadic or Nikolic, however, it’s a good bet that the new leaders will also want to resolve the status issue in a way that allows Serbia to move forward more crisply toward EU membership. This is key to improving Serbia’s economic prospects and would reap profound political gains.

Some believe – and in Kosovo may fear – that the new Serbian government will be in such a hurry to gain EU approval that it will end its support for the north and de-legitimatize the current local leaders. Whoever assumes power in Belgrade is, however, unlikely to be able to give away the north outright. Any ruling coalition could split over such action. Belgrade probably will be willing, however, to reach a deal that at least a majority of the northerners could go along with. Some northern Kosovo Serbs have begun thinking about possible compromises. A key will be recognition by the Quint, Pristina and Belgrade of those leaders viewed as credible interlocutors by the northerners themselves. You don’t start a true dialogue by trying to pick the other side of the table.

Gerard M. Gallucci is a retired US diplomat and UN peacekeeper. He worked as part of US efforts to resolve the conflicts in Angola, South Africa and Sudan and as Director for Inter-American Affairs at the National Security Council. He served as UN Regional Representative in Mitrovica, Kosovo from July 2005 until October 2008 and as Chief of Staff for the UN mission in East Timor from November 2008 until June 2010. Gerard is also a member of TransConflict’s Advisory Board.

To read TransConflict’s policy paper, written by Gerard and entitled ‘The Ahtisaari Plan and North Kosovo’, please click here.

To read other articles by Gerard for TransConflict, please click here.

To learn more about both Serbia and Kosovo, please check out TransConflict’s new reading lists series by clicking here.

To keep up-to-date with the work of TransConflict, please click here. If you are interested in supporting TransConflict, please click here.

A regional tournament in Belgrade provided university students from throughout the Western Balkans with the opportunity to debate a variety of contemporary issues of relevance to the region and beyond.

The fifth regional Debating tournament of the Faculty of Political Science, “Denny Crane 2012″, took place last week, with a final debate on the motion that “This House would never restore the buildings destroyed in the bombing”.

Over the course of two days, debaters from the entire region competed for the title of the best team in the Balkans, through a series of debates on current political and social themes, such as the fight against terrorism, women’s rights, religion and politics, the relationship between the poor and rich, and eco-terrorism.

The winner of this year’s tournament was the team, ‘Independent List’, composed of Ognjen Rakić, from the Faculty of Law, and Stefan Badža, from the Faculty of Physical Education, the University of Belgrade. Students of the Faculty of Political Science, Helena Ivanov and Stefan Sirindžinski, who qualified for the semi-finals and had an equal number of speakers’ votes after four rounds, shared the award for best speaker. Amongst the ten best speakers were students of the Faculty of Political Science, Ana Kostadinović and Katarina Sladaković, taking sixth and ninth place, respectively.

The themes of the tournament were:

• First round – “This House prefers Guantanamo Bay rather than the current practice of the war against terrorism with unmanned aerial vehicles.”
• Second round – “In the case of a contact with extra-terrestrial beings, this House would send a woman as a negotiator.”
• Third Round – “This House would grant one seat in the Parliament to all more significant religions.”
• Fourth round – “This House would make a number of votes of one voter inversely proportional to his/her personal wealth.”
• Semi-finals – “This House believe that only people who take the law into their hands can save us.”
• Finals – “This House would never restore the buildings destroyed in the bombing.”

‘Denny Crane’ is a debating tournament which has been organised by the Debating Club of the Faculty of Political Science for the past five years. It is named after Denny Crane, from the famous American series, “Boston Legal”, who is portrayed as one of the best lawyers owing to his impressive debating skills.

The Debating Club of the Faculty of Political Science is part of a network of debating clubs within the academic network ‘Open Communication’. This year, the Debating Club is celebrating the tenth anniversary of its work.

TransConflict is pleased to be a friend of the Debating Club of the Faculty of Political Science, and looks forward to support its future endeavours.

Progress toward more effective management of regional disputes will be possible only if leaders emerge inside the region capable and willing to channel their own and their followers’ emotions toward negotiations everyone accepts from the outset will lead to painful sacrifices on everyone’s part.

By David B. Kanin

In a region burdened by frozen conflict, current events are reminding everyone involved of the dangers posed by contested sovereignty.  Kosova’s ill-conceived decision to knuckle under to international pressure and accept the placement of an asterisk on its identity led Pristina to become aggressive in its demand that international overseers prevent Kosovar Serbs from holding local elections in conjunction with Serbia’s just-completed election.  Various Serbian responded to Pristina’s rhetoric by warning darkly of possible violence against Serbs in Kosova.  A few days after what proved to be relatively quiet elections – compared to what went on in France and Greece, Serbia appeared to be Europe’s island of political continuity, and not much at all went on inside Kosova – Kosovar interior minister, Bajram Rexhepi, still hinted at possible use of force north of the Ibar.  At the same time, Serbian police arrested ethnic Albanians in southern Serbia as a part of Ivica Dacic’s campaign strategy – Dacic was accordingly rewarded at the ballot box.

The internationals’ diminution of Kosova’s status put into high relief continuing disarray over what to do in the Balkans; the US and others continue to fail to bring to heel five EU members who refuse to recognize the new state.  Whether and how sputtering negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina resume depends on the outcome of the negotiations that will form the new government in Serbia on how Kosova decides to deal with its externally imposed diplomatic disadvantage.

Macedonia’s inter-communal condition is even more worrying.  Early EU membership is off the table – much as this author would wish it otherwise.  The “name” imbroglio with Greece ensures that the NATO summit in Chicago will be no more satisfying to Macedonia than was the Alliance’s poorly choreographed meeting in Bucharest in 2008.  The arrest of allegedly radical Jihadists for the murder of five Macedonian fishermen tests the stability of a piece of former Yugoslavia so far spared the horrors of major fighting.  The bombastic “Skopje 2014” project highlights ethnic Macedonian insecurity over their identity and reinforces ethnic Albanian irritation with being treated as less than a fully constituent political community.

It is worth remembering that Bosnia too remains a faltering Western enterprise.  The central state is illegitimate (or irrelevant) to two of the country’s three major communities and is too weak to provide much value to the Bosnjak plurality – witness the trade of insults and accusations over the Dobrovoljacka Street commemoration.

None of this prevents international diplomatic, NGO, and academic figures from placing over-simple blame on nationalist entrepreneurs who allegedly do not represent the wishes of the majority of people in any ethnic group.  No matter how many elections nationalists either win or come close, too many keepers of the multicultural flame brush aside ethnic hatred as a throwback doomed to eventual extinction once the locals finally absorb the education in civics offered them by helpful foreigners.

I recently heard a version of this orthodoxy inferred as part of a scholarly study underway on public attitudes.  A researcher visited co-ethnics in a country neighboring her own to survey views on a wide range of topics.  She noted that the locals at first took her for one of their own, and so mouthed the nationalist line they believed she wanted to hear.  When they realized she was an outsider, they changed their tune to express acceptance of their status in what has become their political and personal home.

This story could lead to various inferences.  One – reflected in questions and commentary from some in the audience – was that these people were conditioned to appear to support nationalism but are ready to become components of a civic society if its government serves their needs and constructive arrangements can be constructed among competing ethno-national communities.  Alternatively, the instinct to mouth a nationalist line could reflect continuing active intimidation by nationalists and the passive intimidation involved in the fear of being labeled as traitors.  Third, people in the Balkans might be so used to having their brains prodded by Western and local researchers that they have become adept at telling outsiders whatever they want to hear – so stated opinions do not necessarily reflect actual opinions.

Whatever the case, the results of public opinion research are of limited value in assessing communal salience.  Since the opening stages of the collapse of the old Federation, inclusive rhetoric has masked the inability of Western teleologists and their local clients to mobilize a political movement capable of overawing nationalists, opportunists, and others with personal or patronal agendas.  Even Serbia’s Tadic and other “liberals” continue to bend to the nationalist narrative on Kosova (while they simultaneously assure international notables of their commitment to civic progress).  Economic problems and recent electoral results remind us that nationalism is not absent from other parts of Europe, of course, but the former Yugoslav space (and Albania) is the one region of Europe where the wars of the last century did not largely decide borders, patterns of settlement, and other physical and psychological aspects of national disputes.  In addition, none of the protagonists in this area has yet produced a figure anywhere close to the stature of a Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, or Zhelyu Zhelev.

Roger Peterson has put his finger on part of the problem.  His recent book (“Western Intervention in the Balkans: The Strategic Use of Emotion in Conflict”) challenges the standard “rational actor” approaches in political science with a model designed to demonstrate the relationship between emotions (specifically, anger, fear, hatred, contempt, and resentment) and inter-communal conflict.  Peterson demonstrates that calculating public opinion or rational interest is at best an inadequate approach to understanding the sort of interactions inherent in areas of contested sovereignty and mutual communal disdain.

In my view, of particular interest is his assessment of the role of spite – the pathology (my term, not his) in which one’s desire to inflict pain on the adversary is so great that it trumps even the calculation of one’s own interest.  Peterson demonstrates how spiteful people in the Balkans and elsewhere undermine imposed Western formulas in order to inflict that pain, even though the perpetrators also suffer because of their actions.  You can witness such spite in the visceral exchanges among the more nasty personalities who attach comments to articles on this and similar websites.

Peterson’s book is a helpful corrective to more state-based, institutionalist approaches from the Western foreign policy establishment (for a recent example of the latter, see Charles Kupchan’s “How Enemies Become Friends”).  Unfortunately, Peterson deals only with the emotional content of the locals’ decisions.  By ignoring emotional underpinnings inherent in the behavior of Western viceroys and operatives, he permits his US and West European readers to retain an Olympian self-regard as they attempt to figure out what to do about recalcitrant Balkanites.  I hope his future research takes into account the impact of the personal anger, fear, hatred, resentment, and contempt that informs the ambitions, rivalries, and frustrations affecting succeeding generations of Western diplomats and others attempting to enforce their writ on the Balkans and other areas.

Peterson also has some interesting blind spots.  He is overoptimistic about inter-ethnic relations in Macedonia, which perhaps reflects a common “end of history” syndrome in which a writer assumes that, once made, progress toward a desired state will not be reversed.  Charles Tilly’s analysis of democratization and de-democratization is a useful corrective to such thought patterns.

Peterson also constructs an odd, one-on-one comparison involving Bosnia and Montenegro.  This apples-and-oranges pairing ignores the latter’s condition as a kleptocracy and inaccurately treats the Serbian-Montenegrin divide as if it is of the same inter-ethnic category as the relationship between, say, Serbs, and Albanians.  Such basic errors compound the lack of conceptual parallels between these countries and do little to illuminate anything about Bosnia.

In any case, future rational actor-based proposals from outsiders on how to “solve” Balkan problems likely will prove as facile or otherwise inadequate as those that have preceded them over the past two decades.  Progress toward more effective management of regional disputes will be possible only if leaders emerge inside the region capable and willing to channel their own and their followers’ emotions toward negotiations everyone accepts from the outset will lead to painful sacrifices on everyone’s part.  In particular, anything constructive would depend on leaders’ ability to confront and stare down the spiteful behavior of those spoilers from their own communities who exist only to inflict pain on the other side – spite is mutually reinforcing, destructive, and forever.

One of the most difficult aspects of a constructive slog toward inter-communal engagement would be avoiding the temptation to lash out at the spoilers from other communities as they seek the pleasure of inflicting pointless pain.  A corollary to this problem would be the issue of anticipating, thwarting, or – if unsuccessful in those efforts – managing the actions of those spiteful spoilers who react to concrete progress toward mutual respect by engaging in violence.  Authorities unwilling to take on their own thugs are not leaders and do not deserve their perks and status – it is worth reading a book written by Ronald Heifetz some decades ago (“Leadership without Easy Answers”) that distinguishes clearly between the concepts of leadership and authority.

Despite the slogans of the international elite, in dealing with the kinds of disputes evident in the Balkans (like the Middle East), there is no shortcut to around difficult, long-term wrestling among erstwhile adversaries willing to ignore instructions and pressure from outside powers and become accountable for their own future.  The only other proven approach – the one that created what now is called “Europe,” for example – is war, and a lot of it.  Rather than go through that again, it would be better just to take a page from Cyprus and keep the conflicts frozen.

David B. Kanin is an adjunct professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University and a former senior intelligence analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

To learn more about the Balkans, please refer to TransConflict’s reading list series by clicking here.

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TransConflict is pleased to announce that it has become a signatory to the International Campaign to Stop Rape and Gender Violence in Conflict.

The International Campaign to Stop Rape and Gender Violence in Conflict calls for urgent political leadership and concerted international action to prevent, protect and prosecute to stop rape in conflict. In particular, the Campaign calls for:

The Campaign is motivated by the following:

• Because we envision a world without war, rape, and gender violence where women and men are equal;
• Because rape and gender violence destroy individuals and families, entire communities and the fabric of society;
• Because rape and gender violence have increasingly become a deliberate tactic of terror in war and other conflict situations;
• Because in recent years along, massive numbers of women – and sometimes men and boys – have suffered not only the physical trauma of rape and gender violence in war and other conflict situations, but also the shame and stigma that often leaves survivors suffering in silence;
• Because perpetrators of rape and gender violence go unpunished and impunity is the order of the day;
• Because national, regional, and international commitments to end rape and gender violence in war and other conflict situations are either seriously inadequate or are not being enforced; and
• Because women and girls, men and boys across the world demand and expect justice.

The International Campaign to Stop Rape and Gender Violence in Conflict has pinpointed the following country case studies:

• Burma – Burma’s military regime has used violence as a tool of repression against the civilian population and particularly ethnic minorities. The state armed forces continue to be the main perpetrators of human rights violations, including systematic rape. Rape is used as a weapon to intimidate, and with many of the ethnic women attacked—to break or weaken the bonds of their communities and families. Survivor support is still difficult to obtain, especially for women in displaced communities, with the stigma attached to gender violence remaining significantly high.
• Colombia – During the conflict in Colombia, the government has stayed silent on the reports of widespread and systematic gender violence throughout the country. Local organizations and activists, who have monitored the conflict, continually decry the institutionalized gender discrimination rooted within society that provides a culture for rape. While silence often prevails, with survivors of rape facing both stigma and fear of reprisal attacks from their perpetrators, there is significant evidence of systematic violence against the women of Colombia. Gender violence is perpetrated by all participants in the conflict including guerilla groups, paramilitary forces, and the state security forces.
• Democratic Republic of Congo – Rape and gender violence has been marked by extreme brutality including rape, gang rape, genital mutilation, sexual slavery, and insertion of objects into cavities. The incidence of rape remains highest in areas where military operations take place, yet there has been a sharp rise in gender violence throughout the whole of the country. The severe gender imbalance, with prevailing impunity, has allowed for a society where rape is acceptable and unpunished. Domestic violence, rape by former troops living within communities, and by men in positions of power – including police officers – is common. Survivors still lack comprehensive support, and are often too ashamed and fearful to come forward.
• Kenya – Due to high levels of gender inequality and discriminatory perceptions of power, rape and gender violence is a feature of Kenyan society even during peacetime. Yet, gender violence is linked and exacerbated by conflicts and tensions over ethnicity, land, and resources. During the post-election violence in 2007-2008, gender violence was perpetrated along ethnic lines to humiliate, terrorize, and break the bonds of the rival community. Evidence of widespread rape, gang rape, sexual mutilation, and forced circumcision against women and men has been gathered. There were repeated cases of forced female genital mutilation on women who were part of groups who no longer practiced it, or women from the perpetrators own ethnic group who were in a relationship with men from other communities. The violence signified a forceful return to former “traditions.”

Unless the past is articulated in such a way in which the connection of events and experiences are integrated in a real and meaningful way, the ‘truths’ which drove conflict will continue to be reproduced.

By Maire Braniff and Cillian McGrattan

Recent debates in post-conflict Northern Ireland and the countries of the former Yugoslavia have increasingly centred on the issue – to what extent can we expect perpetrators of war crimes and human rights abuses to be held to account for their actions? This paper argues that in conjunction with judicial procedures, post-conflict societies might best foster fragile settlement processes by fencing-in or framing historical narratives about the past. We argue that this framing must speak to documentary evidence and victims’ experiences as an antidote to the attempt by perpetrators of crimes to downplay their historic actions.

Political exigencies

Croatian authorities remain inundated with cases relating to the violence of the 1990s. Although the Croatian Chief State Attorney’s office has revised its procedures for investigating war crimes – reviewing cases where the ethnicity of the victims and perpetrators were given undue importance to the detriment of human rights – the Helsinki Committee has challenged its commitment to bringing high-level perpetrators to justice. In Northern Ireland meanwhile, the Police Service’s Historical Enquiries Team are faced with over 2,000 unresolved murders relating to the period 1969-1998. In response to this daunting task, the outgoing Police Ombudsman, Al Hutchinson, recently floated the idea that a general amnesty should be considered as a pragmatic necessity.

Of course, logistical problems with bringing perpetrators to justice years after episodes of war and mass violence are nothing new – as examples from Germany to Rwanda and from Spain to East Timor, among many others, amply demonstrate. Yet, the fundamental problem remains that the options of amnesty or the Spanish-style pact of silence (in which political elites informally agreed not to use the past for gain in the present) tends towards the muting or overt silencing of victims. For example, although Hutchinson prefaced his remarks with the idea that ‘the victim would have a say whether or not they might consider amnesty and that would be a conditional amnesty’, he neglected to consider just how such a proposal would inevitably place moral pressure on victims to conform to perceived societal obligations to leave their hurts behind and move on.

As the Victims’ Commissioner, Brendan McAllister, pointed out, such a scenario would be ‘repugnant to the majority of victims’. Human rights spokespersons have also questioned the motivation of Croatian authorities, for example in paying for the defence of its citizens who have been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court for the Former Yugoslavia. The president of the Citizen Committee for Human Rights (GOLJP), Zoran Pusic, has, for instance, recently complained that ‘[t]he state is callous towards the war crime victims…we see no political will to compensate the victims’.

Fragmentation

In Bosnia, meanwhile, indictments no longer remain open to public access; thereby eliminating wider society and their victims from the truth and justice process. The omission of victims’ voices heightens a sense of impunity for war crimes and human rights abuses being ‘forgotten and marginalised’. The fragmented approach to truth and justice which takes place at an international and state level, rather than a regional level restricts the range of victims taken into consideration. Hence, the regional wars of the 1990s require a regional approach to dealing with the past which will pursue more coherently a wider sense of victimhood. The promise of the ICTY was exactly this with an added value of affirming individual responsibility. Yet it has failed to filter to a national or regional level, helping to entrench division. On the matter of individual responsibility, marrying the conditions to EU membership with the countries cooperation with the ICTY has had a drawback of exacerbating the countries’ senses of collective guilt and collective punishment.

In Northern Ireland a similarly fragmented approach has taken place – a situation which has been exacerbated by initiatives at times being duplicated by the British government and the devolved Northern Ireland Assembly. So, an assortment of policies have been enacted, including victims’ commissioners and ministers, a Commission for Survivors and Victims, a Consultative Group on the Past and a range of judicial inquires – most notably, the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday, which reported in 2010. As with the Former Yugoslavia, the raft of measures reflects not only a lack of political appetite, but also a lack of societal consensus as to how to approach the past. Residual sectarianism – particularly among younger people who had no direct experience of the violence – coupled with that uncertainty about the past indicates that Northern Ireland remains a divided society that is still very much influenced by historical dynamics.

Fencing-In

While both areas have to a large extent moved beyond violent ethnic conflict there has been no Year Zero and the promises of peace seem to be increasingly held to ransom by cynical forces (both within government and terrorist spoilers outside the democratic process) who draw inspiration from those ideas that plunged both societies into killings and mayhem. Methodologies and approaches for engaging victims into a process require careful consideration of amnesty, truth, justice and public openness.

Given the subtlety necessary for approaching violent pasts, such processes of engagement are always liable to political manipulation. In Northern Ireland, for example, the largest nationalist party, Sinn Féin recently floated the idea of reaching out to their ethnic opponents. Reconciliation could, the party argued, come about through ‘uncomfortable conversations’. The party was, it stated, ‘prepared to take the lead in helping to shape an authentic reconciliation process and embrace the discomfort of moving outside our political and historic comfort zones’. Yet, a prerequisite to this must surely be to recognise just how comfortable that zone is. Indeed, that is even more of a task for a party that had been the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, which was responsible for 60% of the 3,700 conflict-related deaths. Sadly, Sinn Féin seem incapable of moving beyond formal acceptance of its responsibility of turning away from a peaceful civil rights movement and initiating a ‘war’ against the unionist population of Northern Ireland and the British state. Rather than atonement for these historical facts, Sinn Féin seems more interested in harnessing ethnicised narratives for its own ends. Thus, the ‘armed struggle’, it maintains ‘arose from political conditions as a last resort and those conditions no longer exist’.

In a much quoted phrase, Michael Ignatieff argued that the real value of truth recovery processes may not be to contribute to societal reconciliation but is much more limited: they could, he contended, reduce the number of ‘permissible lies’. Of course there can never be one past in any society, not least ethnically divided ones. However, unless the past is articulated in such a way in which the connection of events and experiences are integrated in a real and meaningful way, the ‘truths’ which drove conflict will continue to be reproduced. The problem with this, naturally, is that ‘real and meaningful’ are in-themselves social constructs; but they do have a basis in the memories of victims and others who lived through the violent past; they are recorded in newspapers, governmental and party political archives and in the marked and unmarked graves across places such as the North of Ireland and the Balkans. Fencing-in narratives about the past means paying attention to those links and excluding through reasoned argument and documentary evidence those ethnicised understandings that try to suggest otherwise.

Máire Braniff is conducting research consultancy work for INCORE at the University of Ulster where she also lectures in politics. Her book, ‘Integrating the Balkans: from conflict to integration’, was published by IB Tauris in 2011.

Cillian McGrattan lectures in politics at the University of the West of Scotland. His ‘History: Memory, Identity and Politics’ is to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013.

This article was originally published on OpenDemocracy on Monday 12th March, 2012, and can be accessed by clicking here.

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Amidst a deteriorating economic environment, the Serbian electorate goes to the polls on May 6th with issues such as jobs and prosperity trumping those of Kosovo and the EU.

By Ian Bancroft

Serbia faces simultaneous presidential, parliamentary, provincial and local elections on 6th May; elections that will reflect the evolution in political attitudes and orientations since 2008. With a consensus on EU membership having emerged amongst the country’s political elites, the main sparring points concern not the issue of Kosovo, but rather economic and social reforms; particularly the respective parties’ ability to create jobs and attract foreign investment. Though campaigning has been largely negative, with a lack of substantive policy debate and lingering concerns about media control, the elections represent another important step for the normalization of Serbian politics and democracy.

Like elsewhere in Europe, the incumbent coalition government – led by Democratic Party (DS) of Serbian president, Boris Tadić – faces an electoral challenge fuelled by deep dissatisfaction with rising unemployment.  Its main opposition comes from the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) – headed by the former deputy-leader of the Serbian Radical Party, Tomislav Nikolić – which has been leading the DS in the polls throughout by a margin of three-to-four percentage points. Tadić’s decision to voluntarily resign as president and stand for re-election was prompted by his considerable personal popularity amongst the Serbian electorate, plus the higher turnout that presidential elections tend to attract, which it was felt would boost the DS’s electoral chances. It is also likely that Tadić wanted to avoid a further ratcheting-up of EU conditionality, particularly with respect to Kosovo, had he seen out the remainder of his term.

The core of the campaign has focused upon the contender’s respective credibility on delivering jobs and improvements in living standards. Whilst the DS platform is firmly grounded in securing further progress towards EU membership (Serbia was awarded candidate status in early-March, but awaits a date to start negotiations) as the basis for future prosperity, the SNS has aimed to feed off the discontent created by four years of abject economic performance. The former has been further challenged by Europe’s own economic crisis and growing scepticism as to whether it really does provide a source of future prosperity, whilst the latter has struggled to persuade that it offers a viable alternative.

The elections will be followed almost immediately by long and arduous rounds of coalition negotiations involving much hard bargaining and trading, including of public offices and institutions. As in 2008, the Socialist Part of Serbia (SPS), headed by Ivica Dačić – the current interior minister and a former spokesperson during the Slobodan Milošević regime – will again play the role of kingmaker. The price extracted for his support, however, is bound to rise, including a possible bid for the post of prime minister. Dačić’s negotiating scope will also depend upon the relative performance of the other remaining parties, such as the Preokret or ‘U-turn’ coalition (led by the Liberal Democratic Party), the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) – which advocates a policy of neutrality towards both NATO and the EU – and even the largely depleted Serbian Radical Party (SRS). Even a grand SNS-DS coalition – a so-called government of national unity – cannot be entirely excluded, though neither has entertained the prospect to date.

Kosovo, which declared its independence from Serbia in February 2008, has been an inescapable part of the now long-drawn out campaign; not as a key electoral issue – both the main parties lack clear policies for resolving the challenges ahead – but as a dilemma about whether Serbian elections should take place there or not. Whilst a compromise has been reached whereby the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) will provide logistical support to allow Serbs in Kosovo to vote in parliamentary and presidential elections, escalating tensions have prompted NATO to deploy an additional 700 peacekeepers. Serbs in the disputed north of Kosovo, who held a referendum earlier this year rejecting Pristina’s institutions, have vowed to conduct elections – including for local municipalities – regardless of Belgrade or the international community.

Whilst elections in the Balkans are always a source of great conjecture, the latest Serbian elections will prove less decisive than those of previous years. The demise of the Serbian Radical Party and the rise of the SNS is the most manifest example of the reconstitution of Serbian politics. The new consensus is both Europe and Kosovo; the question remains as to how much of the latter will be sacrificed in order to pursue the former. With the former itself wading in uncertainty, this inter-relationship will continue to complicate Serbian politics for many years to come. In the meantime, corruption, the economy and living standards will remain the prime day-to-day concerns of most voters; concerns that the country’s politicians will struggle to deliver on.

Ian Bancroft is the co-founder and executive director of TransConflict

This article was first published by UN Global Experts on Thursday 3rd May 2012 and is available by clicking here.

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A new research film by the European CRIC Research Project analyses the unexpected outcomes of heritage reconstruction in Bosnia and Herzegovina, twenty years after the outbreak of war.

Researchers from the European CRIC Research Project (Identity and Conflict) have made a number of short films documenting the complex impact of the destruction and reconstruction of significant heritage sites after conflict over the last four years in five countries, including Bosnia and Herzegovina. The films were made at low cost as an introduction to forthcoming book chapters and to give an overview of the project’s work to a general audience. Universities in the UK are to use the films for teaching and its hoped they will be of use to colleagues in other European teaching institutions.

• To visit the CRIC Research Project’s YouTube channel, please click here.

In the first of these films selected by TransConflict, “Mostar – heritage reconstruction in a divided city”, CRIC researcher, Dr. Ioannis Armakolas, analyses the post-conflict construction of cultural heritage in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina. He discusses both the unexpected outcomes of reconstruction after the war, and demonstrates the complexity of international involvement in this process.The rebuilding of the iconic 16th century Old Bridge of Mostar was the most prominent and well-publicised international effort for the support of reconstruction of war-ravaged heritage in the Balkans.

The “new” Old Bridge was to be a powerful symbol of reconciliation after civil strife, and through this project the international community sought to promote its vision for a new peaceful and multi-ethnic Bosnia. However, the reconstruction of the Old Bridge and other heritage in the city became contested. Ethnic and political conflict among Mostar’s main groups continued, not least through competition over heritage and war memorialisation. This film analyses the idea that cultural heritage reconstruction can become a means of prolonging conflict through non-violent methods.

The CRIC Research Project is funded by the European Commission within the Seventh Framework Programme.

• For further information about other CRIC research in Bosnia, please click here.
• For more detailed research analysis, please visit CRIC’s Vimeo channel by clicking here.

CRIC (Cultural Heritage and the Reconstruction of Identities after Conflict)
Project background:
Recent conflicts in Europe, as well as abroad, have brought the deliberate destruction of the heritage of others, as a means of inflicting pain, to the foreground. With this has come the realisation that the processes involved – and thus the long-term consequences – are poorly understood. Heritage reconstruction is not merely a matter of design and resources – at stake is the re-visioning and reconstruction of people’s identities.

This project has investigated the ways the destruction and subsequent selective reconstruction of the cultural heritage impact on the way societies recover from war. With case studies in five European countries, the films presented by CRIC researchers discuss the following questions:

• What conditions and ideologies inspire the destruction of cultural heritage and what is selected for destruction?
• What are the consequences at local, national and regional levels of such destruction and the subsequent reconstruction of parts of people’s heritage?

In the absence of a mutually-acceptable political outcome for northern Kosovo, the UN must be prepared to stay in the field and return, if necessary, its own international police force to stand with KFOR as the responsible peacekeepers.

By Gerard M. Gallucci

News on Kosovo is full of reporting based on a story published by Koha Ditore in Pristina.  Koha apparently claims to have a government document that suggests that Kosovo will end its period of “supervised independence” without having settled the north.  Kosovo’s parliament will supposedly take action on 22 constitutional amendments and 21 laws that will remove the elements of the Ahtisaari Plan that gave executive competencies to the international authorities.  These will be “transferred” to the institutions of the Kosovo state.  The target date is said to be September, when the International Community Office (ICO), which was to exercise most of the competencies mandated to the internationals, is to cease functioning.  EULEX would stay longer but without any “supranational” policing function.

The ICO was a mostly moribund entity since its creation and its demise will make little practical difference.  Non-Albanians south of the Ibar River won’t have anyone to take their problems to but in reality have been in the hands of Pristina institutions and the Kosovo Albanian majority anyway.  The real import of the end of “supervised independence” will be to further justify Pristina acting unilaterally in the north.  Contrary to Koha Ditore, the document’s alleged failure to mention the north is the message.  Pristina seems to have no other plan for the north than to take it the moment the internationals go missing or stand down.  (This barring some truth to the rumors of secret contacts with Belgrade.)  It outlined its approach in July 2011 and has repeatedly referred to it.

Obviously, neither Pristina nor the Quint can unilaterally suspend UN Security Council Resolution 1244.  That mandates an international peacekeeping presence in Kosovo.  Recent events demonstrate that peacekeeping remains quite relevant. NATO has sent reinforcements for northern Kosovo, and both KFOR and the EU have cautioned Pristina not to attempt to use force in the north.  KFOR has blocked action by Kosovo’s special police (ROSU) and EULEX says it has increased patrols in mixed areas in the north.  Nothing Pristina does or says should be allowed to dictate the approach taken by the international peacekeepers.  They will need to stay until a real peace takes hold.

However, it is not enough for EULEX to simply remain in Kosovo.  It seems intent on retreating to a mere “mentor, monitor and advise” role (MMA).   NATO has noticed EULEX’s failure to exercise its peacekeeping functions in the north.  EULEX has indeed made matters worse in the north by enforcing Kosovo Albanian unilateral returns, seeking to impose Kosovo customs at the boundary and allowing the Kosovo police to act unilaterally in the north.  EULEX exercises executive authority for rule of law under a grant of responsibility from the UN, not from Brussels, Washington, Berlin or Pristina.  If it cannot or will not do the job neutrally and as the international peacekeeping police force, then this responsibility falls back to the UN.

UN/DPKO in New York was pleased with itself in November 2008 for transferring rule of law to EULEX.  It thought this got the UN off the hook for Kosovo.  Not so.  Until and unless there is a mutually acceptable political outcome for northern Kosovo, the UN had better be prepared to stay in the field and return, if necessary, its own international police force to stand with KFOR as the responsible peacekeepers.

Gerard M. Gallucci is a retired US diplomat and UN peacekeeper. He worked as part of US efforts to resolve the conflicts in Angola, South Africa and Sudan and as Director for Inter-American Affairs at the National Security Council. He served as UN Regional Representative in Mitrovica, Kosovo from July 2005 until October 2008 and as Chief of Staff for the UN mission in East Timor from November 2008 until June 2010. Gerard is also a member of TransConflict’s Advisory Board.

To read TransConflict’s policy paper, written by Gerard and entitled ‘The Ahtisaari Plan and North Kosovo’, please click here.

To read other articles by Gerard for TransConflict, please click here.

To learn more about both Serbia and Kosovo, please check out TransConflict’s new reading lists series by clicking here.

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