Republika Srpska: After Independence
By Matthew Parish
Bosnia’s gradual disintegration would appear inevitable. The only question is how the international community will, and should, react to this process.
A new state – “Republika Srpska” - is shortly to be born in South Eastern Europe, the eighth to emerge from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. The delivery of this troubling new child will be neither easy nor straightforward.
People may die, and diplomatic isolation may follow. The choices the international community makes in the aftermath of these events will be critically important to the welfare of all the people of the region. For Western policymakers it will be a matter of choosing the lesser evil.
Ever since the 1995 peace agreement at Dayton divided the country into two highly autonomous “entities”, it was manifest, even from its name, that the Republika Srpska had pretensions towards statehood. But after the atrocities committed by Serb forces in the Bosnian war, the West viewed the creation of Republika Srpska as a necessary evil at best, a “genocidal creation” in the words of the current Bosniak President, Haris Silajdzic, to be eventually dismantled. This goal, once achieved, would compensate the Bosniaks for the collective guilt the international community felt for having failed to intervene earlier during the conflict.
To pursue this objective, the High Representative was invested with broad and unchecked legal authorities to dismiss elected officials, impose legislation, and freeze parties’ bank accounts. Although the constitution agreed at Dayton limited central government authorities to a paltry catalogue, by 2006 the number of functions performed by the state were significant, including prosecution of war crimes and financial crime, foreign affairs, indirect taxation, central banking, and EU negotiations. These structures were created by threatening Bosnian Serb politicians, sullied by associations with wartime crimes, with a one-way ticket to the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, ICTY, if they refused to cooperate. The new central institutions were funded from outside Bosnia’s bankrupt domestic economy through foreign aid....................
more see;http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/comment/23797/
By Matthew Parish
Bosnia’s gradual disintegration would appear inevitable. The only question is how the international community will, and should, react to this process.
A new state – “Republika Srpska” - is shortly to be born in South Eastern Europe, the eighth to emerge from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. The delivery of this troubling new child will be neither easy nor straightforward.
People may die, and diplomatic isolation may follow. The choices the international community makes in the aftermath of these events will be critically important to the welfare of all the people of the region. For Western policymakers it will be a matter of choosing the lesser evil.
Ever since the 1995 peace agreement at Dayton divided the country into two highly autonomous “entities”, it was manifest, even from its name, that the Republika Srpska had pretensions towards statehood. But after the atrocities committed by Serb forces in the Bosnian war, the West viewed the creation of Republika Srpska as a necessary evil at best, a “genocidal creation” in the words of the current Bosniak President, Haris Silajdzic, to be eventually dismantled. This goal, once achieved, would compensate the Bosniaks for the collective guilt the international community felt for having failed to intervene earlier during the conflict.
To pursue this objective, the High Representative was invested with broad and unchecked legal authorities to dismiss elected officials, impose legislation, and freeze parties’ bank accounts. Although the constitution agreed at Dayton limited central government authorities to a paltry catalogue, by 2006 the number of functions performed by the state were significant, including prosecution of war crimes and financial crime, foreign affairs, indirect taxation, central banking, and EU negotiations. These structures were created by threatening Bosnian Serb politicians, sullied by associations with wartime crimes, with a one-way ticket to the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, ICTY, if they refused to cooperate. The new central institutions were funded from outside Bosnia’s bankrupt domestic economy through foreign aid....................
more see;http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/comment/23797/
No comments:
Post a Comment