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Bosnia is sliding toward renewed conflict.

By JAMES LYON and KURT BASSUENER
November 4, 2008

When a new U.S. president takes office in January, he will not only inherit a global financial crisis but also a daunting set of foreign-policy challenges. To compound the next administration’s problems, the European Union will be preoccupied with creating a viable constitutional structure following the failure to ratify the Lisbon Treaty, and will therefore prove unable to formulate a coherent and proactive foreign policy.

In addition to the headline grabbers of Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran, Georgia, Congo, Somalia, Russia’s resurgence and the war on terror, Washington and Brussels may soon find themselves blindsided by a crisis at Europe’s doorstep that many considered long resolved.

This month will mark 13 years since the Dayton Peace Accords ended the 1992-95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since then, the international community committed significant resources to repair infrastructure, return refugees to prewar homes, disarm warring factions and form a protectorate under a High Representative.

Bosnia’s Serbs committed genocide and ethnic cleansing to create an ethnically clean state to join Greater Serbia. The Bosnian government, which became increasingly Muslim during the war, wanted a multiethnic state with functional central institutions. The compromise reached at Dayton gave the Serbs their own ethnically pure entity in Bosnia, Republika Srpska, but without the right to secede, while committing them to a functional central government with the Bosniaks and Croats.

For years the EU has repeated the message that reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina is heading in the right direction, citing the Stabilization and Association Agreement signed earlier this year as evidence. Yet the political environment in Bosnia has noticeably worsened and could lead to attempts at secession and renewed conflict.

Many Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs perceive an increased threat and tensions have risen to postwar heights. Serbs and Bosniaks accuse each other of secretly rearming. To make things worse, France has proposed withdrawing the only remaining international security force, the Eufor military mission. With the weakening of the military deterrent and failing will to use the High Representative’s executive powers, the region has moved into a rules-free environment in the eyes of most politicians and many citizens. So people are hedging their bets, confident or terrified as the case may be, that there is no more restraining hand. A shift to a “soft power” oriented new EU mission would only dig the hole deeper. International listlessness has led some Bosnian politicians to believe that they can pursue wartime objectives without challenge.

Since 2006 the international High Representatives have stood idly by and permitted two of Bosnia’s most prominent politicians — Republika Srpska Premier Milorad Dodik and the Bosniak member of the state presidency, Haris Silajdzik — to feed off each other and inflame ethnic tensions. Mr. Dodik is trying to strangle state institutions in the hope that the international community will acquiesce to his entity’s independence, while raising the prospect of a secession referendum. For his part, Mr. Silajdzic advocates abolishing the Serbian entity.

Among some senior Bosniak leaders, fear of international abandonment and the memory of the EU’s inability to stop Serb atrocities during the 1990s are leading to contingency planning to pick up where the war left off in September 1995. Rather than nip nationalist tendencies in the bud, the EU and U.S. are considering declaring victory, closing the Office of the High Representative, and transferring oversight to the EU Special Representative.

The largest Bosniak political party, the SDA, recently adopted a lengthy platform that detailed where the Dayton Accords had not been implemented, most notably when it comes to refugee return. The SDA says that if the Office of the High Representative — an integral part of the Dayton Accords — is shut down without the treaty being entirely fulfilled, the party would revert to Bosnia’s prewar constitution. The consequence of declaring Dayton null and void is a de facto declaration that the Republika Srpska is illegitimate — and that action to end it would therefore be legitimate.

The EU has demonstrated little appetite to resolve Bosnia’s problems in a timely fashion. Brussels still believes incremental progress in Bosnian state-building remains possible by tinkering around the margins of the Dayton constitution, while devoting energies toward mollifying Serbian anger over Kosovo’s independence. With the looming closure of the Office of the High Representative, the EU’s reluctance to invest its mission with executive powers means the centrifugal forces that have torn at the seams of the postwar Bosnian state are now dominant.

Although Bosnia is not at the brink of war, it has slid quite far down a slippery slope. EU foreign, development and defense ministers have an opportunity to avert this emerging crisis at their Nov. 10 meeting. In the immediate term they should bolster the international security forces in the region to deter nationalist politicians. If they wish to halt the slide toward renewed conflict, the EU must push for fundamental constitutional reform that would create a functional state that is not subject to ethnic obstruction. This will require strong support from the U.S., a more serious international security commitment to Bosnia, and an EU special representative with a robust mandate that would include the ability to remove obstructionist politicians from power, freeze assets, initiate criminal prosecutions and place people on the EU visa-ban list.

Surely the EU and U.S. have invested too many resources to see Bosnia shift toward secession and violence. Early action can prevent further deterioration. It is time for Brussels and Washington to take concerted action to turn things around.

Messrs. Lyon and Bassuener are senior associates of the Democratization Policy Council.

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