BOSNIA: Administrator believes postwar generation holds key, writes Daniel McLaughlin in Sarajevo
Bosnia's quarrelsome Serb, Muslim and Croat leaders must pull together to forge a new constitution capable of dragging the country from a mire of poverty, corruption and bureaucracy, the Balkan state's international administrator says.
Lord Paddy Ashdown, who steps down as high representative in January, said only a new attitude and ultimately a new generation of politicians could lead Bosnia into the European Union, and heal the wounds of a 1992-1995 war between the ethnic groups.
A decade after the Dayton accords pacified Bosnia by dividing it into Serb-run Republika Srpska and a Muslim-Croat federation, Lord Ashdown also admits that his post is an anachronism that should be abolished next year.
"Dayton's task was to establish peace, now the task is to transition into Europe and have a functioning state, rather than one which spends 70 per cent of a very poor people's taxes on government," he told The Irish Times in his Sarajevo office.
"And the key to that is constitutional change - it is a means not an end." In a high-profile ceremony in the US last month marking a decade since Dayton, Bosnia's leaders agreed to overhaul a constitution that burdens the country with a complex, divisive and hugely wasteful political system.
But Washington's stage-management of the event created unrealistic hopes for reforms that Bosnian Serbs in particular view with suspicion, fearing loss of autonomy.
"It generated views that we would rewrite Dayton overnight," Lord Ashdown says of a lavish US occasion that he believes "had a direct relation to the situation in Iraq, to show that a peace and stability mission in a 'Muslim' country could succeed."
Lord Ashdown imagines constitutional reform creating a "light state doing only what it has to, governing a highly decentralised country" with strong municipalities.
"It will not be a tidy solution but the point of Europe is that is allows untidy states to exist, like Belgium, for example: you trade a certain level of disfunctionality to allow for the cultural or ethnic mix of the country." He says he does not expect great progress on constitutional change until after elections in October 2006, when he also hopes his successor will be able to cast off his powers as high representative and become simply the EU's special representative here.
"I always thought the wartime generation of politicians could take us on the road to Europe but could not complete the journey," says the former leader of Britain's Liberal Democrats, who came to Bosnia in May 2002.
"A postwar generation has to come through. There's not much sign of them yet but when the EU special representative is in place a strong civil society must emerge and a new attitude to politics." And that new generation must display a willingness to make political decisions that their forefathers either lacked or had no chance to exercise, he says, recalling the various foreign powers that occupied this region over centuries. "There is a characteristic in Bosnians that is summed up with a local word that means 'don't make waves'," Lord Ashdown says.
"If you stuck your head above the parapet you would have it cut off - probably literally when this place was occupied by the Turks or Austro-Hungarians. It is a question in this country of getting rid of that attitude."
Constant cajoling and occasional purges of obstructive officials helped Lord Ashdown push through reforms that were crucial to Bosnia's ambition of joining the EU, and it began preliminary membership talks last month.
Despite opposition, most frequently from Bosnian Serbs, agreement has been reached on a single police force and military and introducing a system of VAT, measures aimed at unifying the country, cutting costs and pulling more cash into state coffers.
"But we still have third-world standards in hospitals; appalling schools; pensions and police pay are the lowest in Europe and there is no welfare system to speak of," Lord Ashdown says.
The kind of major foreign direct investment needed to power long-term economic recovery will only come for Bosnia, and neighbouring Serbia, when Bosnian Serb war crimes suspects Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic are caught.
"These are intelligence-led operations," says Lord Ashdown. "Who has the intelligence? The Serbs. So we cannot catch these people without the active co-operation of the Serbs."
He insists Belgrade and Republika Srpska are now helping in the hunt, and that the network protecting the fugitives is being unravelled and their allies seized.
He speaks with affection of Bosnia, but has sobering advice for his successor.
"Make up your mind what you want to do and get ahead and do it," Lord Ashdown says with customary vigour. "There are three ethnicities here who were warring 10 years ago and still regard each other with an inevitable degree of suspicion." He adds: "You cannot please everybody and you cannot be popular in this job."