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UNITED NATIONS -- "Bosnia has left the headlines--that's the good news,"
asserts Dr. Wolfgang Petritsch, U.N. High Representative for Bosnia and the
international community's political supremo for the beleaguered Balkan
land torn asunder by viscous ethnic strife. Nonetheless rebuilding Bosnia
remains "tedious and slow, but its working."
Dr. Petritsch, an urbane Austrian diplomat has been given the unenviable
mandate of patching the ethnic political quilt of Bosnia Herzegovina back
together. Convincing or coercing the three ethnic groups of Croatians,
Muslims and Serbs to coexist evokes the task of all the kings men in the
tale of piecing Humpty Dumpy back together again. It may sound logically
simple but this tragically is not child's play.
Austria's Hapsburgs once controlled Bosnia--even today's historically
vacuous students seem to know it was a Serb who murdered Archduke Ferdinand
in Sarajevo igniting WWI in 1914. Fewer people, including the educated
experts in Europe's foreign ministries can comprehend the depth of the
debacle following the breakup of socialist Yugoslavia in the early 1990's
when virile forces of neo-nationalism ignited and the myth of a unified
Yugoslavia went up in smoke. Four years of hideous horror followed in
Bosnia--200,000 killed in ethnic strife in the Europe of the 1990's!
Addressing the UN Security Council as High Representative for Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Dr. Petritsch asserted that economically "Bosnia is still far
too dependent on international aid, which in turn is steadily
diminishing--if Bosnia is to have any hope of a secure future, the economy
must become self sustaining--and fast."
While calling for investments he added, "The trouble is that the system
governing the country's economy is to a large extent the same as it was in
the days of communism, despite international pressure...the present system
simply stifles enterprise." He says what is necessary among other things
is "private enterprise."
A recent Financial Times report on Bosnia's economy illustrates "The tiny
private sector made 58 percent of the total profits in the Federation in
1998, State and mixed state-private ownership companies accounted for 88
percent of all losses." Still a government plan giving citizens vouchers
to share in newly privatized firms has a mixed success record.
A central theme in the recovery equation remains the speedy return of
refugees forced from their homes--many are internally displaced inside
Bosnia itself. "Facilitating their return is the number one means of
normalizing Bosnia," Dr. Petritsch stresses.
I asked Dr. Petritsch about the numbers--"there were 800,000 still
internally displaced and a further 300,000 are refugees abroad." He was
happy to report that in 1998, 40,000 returned, in 1999, 80,000 and the
projected number for 2000 is perhaps 150,000. This remains a notable
accomplishment.
That being said, I asked why in the light of last year's Kosovo Crisis and
the Serb atrocities against ethnic Albanians--did the Kosovars return
relatively quickly but not the Bosnians? Petritsch stressed "The big
difference is that the international community had intervened in Kosovo at
an early stage of deportations...Bosnia in contrast, suffered four years of
war from 1992. By the end of the war, a quarter of the population had
been displaced."
Tragically, Dr. Petritsch concedes, "the ethnic agenda survived the war.
Thus when we look at the post Dayton peace accord arrangements with power
sharing among the three factions Croatians, Muslims and Serbs, we discover
many politicians blocking progress towards peace and reconciliation." Dr.
Petritsch knows the parties well having served as Austrian Ambassador to
Belgrade in as well as the European Union's pointman for the Balkans.
The Dayton Peace accords established a highly decentralized state with two
entities; the Bosnian-Croat Federation (Muslim/Catholic) and the Republic
Srpska (the Serb/Orthodox ethnic rump regime).
Dr. Petritsch advised "I dismissed 22 public officials from across the
country who had a proven track record of obstructionism, particularly
regarding refugee return." Asked whether his actions were aimed at any
particular community, he stressed his focus on all communities but then
conceded "this is the tip of the iceberg." He told me that "among the
politicians there is a lack of political will to compromise...the political
class needs to compromise with each other."
I often wonder whether the word compromise exists in the Serbo-Croatian
dictionary?
John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.
