The Dayton Accord, or Design of ProtectoratesНазад
The Dayton Accord, or Design of Protectorates
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.
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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 rule, 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 future Constitution. As a result- the total control over economic, political and military strategic spheres of the region.
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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 the preparations 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 Serbs. 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.
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1Modern Political Atlas: Multiple Statistic Analysis of Political Systems in Different Countries.- Moscow.:MSIIR-University, 2007
