Like most terrorists, he was young. He had been born in the
days just before bitter hatred engulfed his country; not long after his
birth, his father had been seized by authorities and killed, along with
scores of other Sunni Muslims. Two weeks ago, the 24-year-old son
marched into a police station reportedly shouting the jihadist war cry “Allahu Akbar!” and then opened fire, killing one officer and wounding two others, before he was killed in a firefight with police.
Over
the weekend, 350 miles to the south, eight more policemen were killed
along with 14 suspected terrorists in a raging gunbattle near an
international border created in the aftermath of World War I that
radicals no longer recognize.
Another day in Syria or Iraq? No,
this happened in Europe, an easy day’s drive from Vienna. The first
attack, in Zvornik, a town in Bosnia’s Serb entity, was a shocking
reminder of the potential influence of radical Islam in the region,
especially in the wake of the rise of the Islamic State (also called
ISIS). Only a small number of Bosnians have been radicalized, and even
fewer have gone to fight in Syria and Iraq. But in the still-fractured
Balkans, it doesn’t take many radicals to destabilize a country.
Nor
is radical Islam the only threat to years of work and billions in
investment in the region by Washington and its European partners. In the
wake of the standoff with the West over Ukraine, Russia has stepped up
its own role there, with incendiary appeals to Orthodox Slav solidarity.
Indeed, Moscow has voiced staunch support for the embattled government
in Macedonia, where the second shocking incident occurred. The weekend’s
firefight, replete with grenades, snipers, and automatic weapons, took
place in the town of Kumanovo near the border of Macedonia, Serbia, and
Kosovo. The government described the fight as a battle between the
police and “one of the most dangerous terrorist groups in the Balkans,”
presumably meaning Albanian radicals. The real circumstances of the
shoot-out are murky and the timing suspicious, coming as the government
contends with growing waves of protests over revelations of alleged
massive government abuse. As the Macedonian president rushed back from
Moscow, his hosts there sharply criticized demonstrators and warned
against another “color revolution.”
With Macedonia facing
potential implosion, with Bosnian unity at its most tenuous since the
war, and with Kosovo witnessing a mass exodus of citizens who have given
up on its corrupt, divisive government, the three most vulnerable
countries of the region stand on a precipice. A slide toward radicalism
and inter- or even intraethnic strife, abetted by Russian or Islamist
opportunism, is fully plausible. And if it happens, U.S. and European
diplomats will be forced to finally answer a question: Who lost the
Balkans?
A
group of Kosovars walk along a road after they crossed the
Hungarian-Serbian border near the village of Asotthalom February 6,
2015. The EU is experiencing a steep rise in the number of Kosovo
citizens smuggling themselves into the bloc, with 10,000 filing for
asylum in Hungary in just one month this year compared to 6,000 for the
whole of 2013. Just
as at the height of the wars in former Yugoslavia, Washington and
Brussels will likely point fingers at each other. In fact, the blame
will be shared. Neither the crises in Ukraine nor those in the Middle
East are alibis for the West’s timid policies and sporadic attention in
recent years. The truth is that although destabilization in the Balkans
poses far less of a threat to Western interests than Putin’s aggression
or ISIS’ barbarism, it is a far less difficult challenge to overcome.
There are no nuclear weapons in the region. Suicide terrorism, so far,
is extremely rare. And most of all, unlike either Ukraine or the
countries of the Middle East, even the most divided countries of
southeast Europe still share a common strategic orientation, with
generally high rates of support for joining NATO and the EU.
But
instead of seizing on this strong foundation to overcome remaining
obstacles to Euro-Atlantic integration, the West has allowed the
fledgling countries of the region to backslide. Washington prematurely
handed over lead responsibility for the Balkans to the EU, which
prematurely handed over lead responsibility to the region’s leaders.
With no meaningful EU carrots or sticks to restrain their behavior,
politicians have largely consolidated their corrupt patronage networks,
co-opted or intimidated the media, and resisted meaningful reform.
MELEE IN MACEDONIA
Macedonia
is a prime example of the consequences of sporadic attention. With
intensive international help following the outbreak of hostilities
between ethnic Macedonians and Albanians in 2001, the country made
steady progress in building joint democratic institutions. In 2006,
current Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski took office. After four
increasingly dubious elections, he has managed to consolidate power by
debilitating the judiciary, marginalizing the opposition, and
eviscerating independent media. In 2007, Macedonia ranked number 36,
ahead of the United States, in Freedom House’s Press Freedom Index. Last
year, Macedonia sunk to 123, languishing with the likes of Venezuela.
The country’s economy, meanwhile, remains afloat through a sharp and
unsustainable rise in borrowing.
A
girl shouts anti-government slogans in front of the Archaeological
Museum in Skopje, Macedonia May 7, 2015. Several hundred people demanded
the resignation of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski.
Still among the region’s youngest leaders, Gruevski would be sitting
pretty with years left in power were it not for a wiretapping scandal
that has revealed the breathtaking extent of government abuse. Released
periodically by the opposition, recorded phone calls allegedly describe
the government’s direct orchestration of financial and electoral fraud,
mass electronic surveillance, framing of political opponents for crimes,
and even murder. In the most shocking revelation, released last week,
senior government officials are allegedly heard scheming to cover up a
dubious car accident that took the life of a noted government critic.
Another recording seems to implicate the government in sweeping under
the rug a case in which police had beaten a young reveler to death.
Gruevski and other government officials have denied the allegations,
claiming that the wiretaps are the work of unspecified “foreign agents”
who aim to destabilize the country.
In response, this month,
thousands of young Macedonians have braved truncheon-bearing riot police
to protest. They and the opposition demand that the prime minister and
his associates hand power over to a caretaker government that will
organize fresh elections while independent investigations into the
revelations proceed. With tensions mounting, the opposition has called
for a massive demonstration next week. Facing severe legal and personal
consequences if he and his cohorts resign, Gruevski appears poised to
fight it out to the end, leaving Macedonia’s stability in the breach.
The
ramifications of the weekend’s shocking violence in Kumanovo are as
unpredictable as the circumstances of the clash are mysterious. There is
precedent in Macedonia for dubious shoot-outs with purported
terrorists, including in 2002 when seven migrants from Pakistan and
India were shot dead by police in a highly suspicious incident. A
Macedonian court eventually cleared the former interior minister of
charges of responsibility for the killings. Last month, a Macedonian
police spokesman claimed that 40 Albanian radicals attacked a police
outpost on the border with Kosovo, yet neither NATO nor the Kosovo
police could confirm any such activity.
Rather
than let Gruevski—who claims that the wiretaps are part of an
international conspiracy to get him to change the country’s name—exploit
the issue, the United States should take the initiative.
Ironically, the shoot out between Macedonian police and purported
Albanian radicals comes as inter-ethnic relations in the country have
made impressive strides. For the first time in its 24-year history as a
modern independent state, ethnic Albanians and Macedonians seem largely
united in the struggle against perceived dictatorship. With nearly all
television stations under the government’s grip, it is Alsat, an
Albanian-owned station, that is airing the wiretaps and offering
extensive airtime to opposition voices, a remarkable gesture of
solidarity. Albanian web-sites have published sharp anti-government
commentary by ethnic Macedonians, something that was largely unheard of
in the traditionally ethnically segregated media sector. The broadcasts
have become increasingly awkward for both the ruling and opposition
Albanian political parties, which have been curiously silent in the face
of the massive scandal.
The international community could play a
decisive role in bringing things to a peaceful resolution, but so far
its reaction has been tentative. Only the German ambassador has openly
called for the government to resign. In the wake of the recent violence,
the U.S. embassy joined the EU, NATO, and the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe to call, improbably, for “the country’s
leaders to pull together and engage in dialogue on all issues facing the
country.”
It is typical of the West to seek to avoid a
confrontation with Gruevski, allowing him and other figures to keep the
region’s open questions simmering. But the one over-arching lesson since
the violent collapse of Yugoslavia 25 years ago is that the failure to
deal with core problems head-on has only made them harder to resolve in
the end. This is especially true in Macdonia’s case, where Greece’s
longstanding objections to the country’s name, which Athens sees as
theft of Greek heritage, have kept Macedonia out of both NATO (where its
membership is on offer) and the EU (with which it is poised to open
negotiations). The country’s current instability could have been avoided
had Skopje been allowed to proceed towards NATO and EU membership.
Rather than move toward autocracy, Gruevski would have been constrained
by strict requirements that have proved to empower democratic
institutions elsewhere.
Rather than forge a trans-Atlantic
consensus on the urgency for a compromise on the name—for which many
possibilities exist—Washington has focused on the matter only when
pressed to do so. In 1995, on the eve of the talks in Dayton, Ohio aimed
at ending the war in Bosnia, Richard Holbrooke achieved a modus vivendi
between Athens and Skopje. In 2004, crisis in Macedonia prompted the
Bush administration to finally recognize Macedonia by its constitutional
name. Feared blowback from Greece over this move never materialized.
Despite that fact, Washington dropped the issue until the run-up to
NATO’s 2008 summit, when it was too late to push the parties into
compromise. Underscoring the West’s impotence on the issue, the
International Court of Justice ruled in 2011 that Athens had no right to
deny Macedonia entry into NATO. Nonetheless, the alliance continues to
leave Skopje, which has fulfilled all requirements for membership, in
the waiting room.
Grueski has seized on international paralysis
over the name issue to provoke Greece with tacky appeals to Macedonian
nationalism. Most recently, he claimed that the wiretaps are part of an
international conspiracy designed to force him to jettison the country’s
name. For its part, Athens has recently emerged as a key player in
trans-Atlantic attempts to thwart a planned Russian-Turkish gas
pipeline, which boosts the ability of the nearly bankrupt country to
stand up to Western pressure on the name issue. In short, as in other
cases from the region, Western inattention has only made the question of
Macedonia’s name more acute and more fraught.
BROKEN BOSNIA
If
Macedonia is in acute pain, Bosnia is facing deeper and nearly
irreparable injury. Radical Islam and Russian influence are exacerbating
ever-present ethnic suspicions. Meanwhile, some of the country’s
politicians are taking concrete steps to split the country. Ruling Serb
and Croat parties recently announced their commitment to thinly veiled
separatist agendas. The Republika Srpska parliament even passed a
resolution for a separatist referendum that, for the first time,
included a concrete date, 2018, for the incendiary plebiscite. If held,
the Serb referendum is guaranteed to reopen hostilities.
Bosnia
will face near-term tests of its cohesion this summer. In June,
long-delayed census results are set to be released, potentially fueling
anger among Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), Croats, and Serbs alike, each of
whom can spin figures to claim advantage or complain of systematic
disadvantage. Then, in July, Bosnia will mark the emotional 20th
anniversary of the massacre at Srebrenica, where more than 7,000 Bosniak
men and boys were killed at the hands of Serb forces.
Bosnian
Muslims speak with census surveyer Elvis Spijudic near Srebrenica,
October 1, 2013. This was Bosnia's first census as an independent state.
U.S. and EU leaders have given up on the priority of getting Bosnia to
change its outmoded constitution that is responsible for most of the
gridlock that keeps the country mired. EU leaders have now coalesced
around a new policy of seemingly easier-to-achieve economic and social
measures. Next month, the EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
are to announce a ballyhooed “reform action plan” meant to spur long
overdue cuts to the bloated bureaucracy and other reforms needed for EU
accession. Unfortunately, the public is adamantly against cutting public
sector jobs, and many politicians rightly fear that reform will force
them to privatize public companies they currently manipulate for
patronage and graft. Sensing this resistance, and congenitally afraid of
confronting local officials, international players are likely to temper
their demands for reform. Brussels already fudged its own requirements
for the formal association agreement between Bosnia and the EU enacted
this year, and officials have made it clear that according Bosnia
candidate status is the crux of their latest strategy for the troubled
country.
Emphasizing form over substance, the EU is no more
likely to achieve desperately needed progress now than it has been over
the past nine years. As in Macedonia, it was in 2006 that the
democratization process, which had seen fledgling joint institutions
take shape under vigorous international stewardship, began to unravel.
Prematurely applying a rigid form of local ownership over institutions,
recalcitrant officials (particularly in the Serb entity) began to unwind
progress and openly challenge the country’s unity. As Washington
periodically attempted to goad the EU into action and local officials
into compromise, Bosnian leaders shrugged off the efforts and the
country slumped more deeply into stagnation. With 14 separate
governments, the country’s institutions today are a dysfunctional relic
of the war years, inhibiting investment and interethnic cooperation. There is no need to squander, through neglect and timidity, a principled effort begun with courage and vision.
The only positive from the terrorist attack in Zvornik is that it may
finally shock international officials into action. An EU-IMF package
that links ambitious standards with generous financial incentives and
credible penalties—such as visa bans and exposure of financial chicanery
for recalcitrant leaders—can finally concentrate minds in Bosnia.
THE KOSOVO EXAMPLE
Concerted
effort can also achieve results in Kosovo, the site of the EU’s most
significant breakthrough. Under Brussels’ leadership, and with strong
U.S. support, Serbia and Kosovo agreed to normalize their relations two
years ago. But bickering between Belgrade and Pristina, abetted by the
refusal of five EU countries to recognize independent Kosovo, along with
endemic corruption, has left Kosovo in miserable shape. Tens of
thousands of Kosovars have left the country for the EU, expressing their
abject lack of confidence in the future with their feet.
Potted
plants are put in place by local Serbs to form a barricade on the main
bridge in the ethnically divided Kosovo town of Mitrovica, June18, 2014. Radical
options for unifying Kosovo with Albania, which would reopen conflict
with Serbs, continue to find favor. Once exemplary moderates have been
hardening their stance against the Brussels-backed compromise. At the
same time, Kosovo has seen disturbing signs of Islamist radicals who
strike fear in the hearts of Serbs and moderate Albanian Muslims alike.
The great worry is that Islamists will find common cause with radical
Albanian nationalists, injecting greater instability into a country
whose security is still overseen by NATO, along with a substantial EU
presence. Brussels and Washington need to press Albanian
leaders to move forward now on key rule of law reforms, while dragging
Belgrade and Pristina to agreement on issues arguably far less onerous
than those they overcame in 2013. Those talks proved that when Brussels
conditions progress toward EU membership on progress in their relations,
then Serbs and Albanians begin to move toward compromise.
Dangers
abound, but the Balkans are by no means hopeless. The irony of today’s
crises in Macedonia, Bosnia, and Kosovo is that while some leaders play
the nationalism card, more ordinary citizens than ever before are
willing to move past ethnic differences. Enough time has been frittered
away protracting the region’s outstanding issues with abortive,
inadequate initiatives. There is no need to squander, through neglect
and timidity, a principled (and largely successful) effort begun with
courage and vision. More than anything, resolving the region’s problems
today simply requires that officials once more take them seriously.
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