World: Please Remember Bosnia

On Thursday, the United Nations Security Council reauthorized the deployment of EUFOR, the European Union peacekeeping force in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The BBC reports:

The UN Security Council voted unanimously on Thursday to prolong the mission of the 2,200-strong EU force (Eufor), whose job it is to prevent any violations of the 1995 Dayton peace deal.

The international civilian body - the Office of the High Representative (OHR) in Bosnia - will stay in place next year.

The Peace Implementation Council (PIC), which oversees the OHR, expressed deep concern about "divisive rhetoric" from Bosnia's political leaders, "which challenges the sovereignty and constitutional order of Bosnia-Hercegovina".

(More, after the jump)

The entire BBC article is worth reading, as it highlights many of the legacies of the violent war in the early 1990s.  The article highlights the divisions created by the establishment of Bosnia and Herzegovina:

The Dayton peace agreement created two semi-state entities: Republika Srpska - for the Serbs - and the Bosniak-Croat Federation for Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) and Croats.

Milorad Dodik has been the first post-war leader to actually challenge the central state. According to the OHR, he has built up parallel institutions, like his own government in Banja Luka, and reappropriated competences which should be held at a state level.

He has refused to hand documents to the state prosecutor, issued Republika Srpska bonds, established a separate Missing Persons Commission, and is now setting up diplomatic offices of Republika Srpska abroad.

About a month ago, Paddy Ashdown and Richard Holbrooke published a piece in the Guardian warning the world of Bosnia's increased, internal Balkinization before our eyes.

Interestingly, Ashdown and Holbrooke say Dodik's sabotage of Bosnia's joint progress is "fuelled by Russian encouragement and petrodollars".

However, the true blame for Bosnia's slide lies with the international community:

This tipping point is the result of a distracted international community. While the Bush administration largely turned its back on Bosnia, the EU became deeply engaged; EU membership has been the critical lever for pressing reforms in Bosnia since it was made policy in 2003. But the EU did not develop a coherent strategy, and by proclaiming progress where it has not been achieved, the EU has weakened not only its own influence in the country, but also the Office of the High Representative (OHR) and the international military presence (the European Union Force, Eufor, which succeeded Nato) the drivers of progress in Bosnia since Dayton.

The degeneration of the OHR's influence coincided with the withdrawal of the US military and the hollowing-out of Eufor, which now has little in the way of operational capacity. Despite the danger signals, France and Spain apparently want to pull the plug on Eufor altogether before the end of the year, seemingly to prove the purely technical point that EU missions can end.

The EU, fixated on a still undefined "transition" from OHR to an EU-centred mission, seems intent on emptying its toolbox before it knows what tools it will need to enable Bosnia's transition. It failed, for example, to back its man on the ground, the able Slovak diplomat Miroslav Lajcak, at a crucial moment, fatally undermining his authority.

An important reminder that once genocide, ethnic cleansing and war crimes are over, the international community's responsibilities to the people affected don't stop.  Kudos to the U.N. Security Council for reauthorizing EUFOR.  Let's hope the world doesn't forget to keep engaging with Darfur long after the violence stops.

Photo of billboard thanking EUFOR taken by my dad in July 2007 in Sarajevo.