A Wedge Issue That Works in Bosnia: Ethnic Separation

Radovan Karadzic revved up the crowd at a campaign rally here this week. Radovan M. Karadzic, that is, cousin and close advisor to Radovan V. Karadzic, indicted war crimes suspect and supreme Bosnian Serb leader, who is banned from public politics.

Banned or not, Karadzic is present at every rally of the Bosnian Serb ruling party--in name or image or by proxy. And the rallies’ message is consistent too, though it also skirts the rules: Use these elections to formalize what we won in war, a sovereign Serbian nation.

“These elections answer the question ‘To be or not to be?’ ” ruling party presidential candidate Momcilo Krajisnik told a crowd that waited patiently under sporadic rain here in the southeastern city of Foca on Sunday. “We have to confirm what we got in the war.”

It was perhaps appropriate that Krajisnik spoke of war gains in Foca, one of the first towns to be “ethnically cleansed” of its Muslim residents when fighting began in the spring of 1992 and launched Bosnian Serb conquest of most of the country. In fact, the Serbs no longer use the name Foca but have renamed their newly obtained city Srbinje.

Because Foca is only about 30 miles southeast of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, its early loss struck panic into leaders based there.

Under the U.S.-brokered Dayton, Ohio, peace accord, nationwide elections will be held Sept. 14 to choose a three-person presidency for Bosnia-Herzegovina (a Serb, a Croat and a Muslim) plus separate officials for the Serbian and Muslim-Croat halves of the country.

The elections were to be conducted under conditions allowing a “free and fair” vote, which was to include the establishment of a politically neutral environment. Western officials, primarily Americans, in charge of the process have abandoned the original criteria but are pushing forward with the elections, despite recognition that proper conditions do not exist.

In a highly publicized, hard-fought move, U.S. diplomats managed to forge an agreement in July that Karadzic would be removed from public office and public sight. Until then, he was still a likely candidate for president. Since then, his personal public appearances have been rare. But his influence remains strong.

Krajisnik, who is also head of the Bosnian Serbs’ self-declared parliament, used Sunday’s campaign rally to punch all the right buttons. A vote for the ruling Serbian Democratic Party, he said, is a vote for God, for the continued existence of the nation, a vote against communism.

He said that Foca, where the Serbs destroyed mosques when they took over, has become an important center for Orthodox Christianity thanks to “God’s will.” (Serbs are Orthodox Christians.) And he reminded the crowd who was responsible for their current glory: “There are people who are not with us, who have more merits than I . . . [and] one man who deserves gratitude from us all. . . . As he once said, in this mandate, God is a Serb.”

To Krajisnik’s left, plastered up on the stage, was a campaign poster of Karadzic. On Saturday, 24 hours earlier, Krajisnik had been warned by the U.S. diplomat in charge of the elections, Robert H. Frowick, that such posters broke the rules and had to come down. Krajisnik assured Frowick that they would never appear again, Frowick’s spokeswoman said. Yet there they were.

Serbian Democratic Party leaders, from the Serbs’ acting president, Biljana Plavsic, on down, have routinely flouted guidelines set by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is supervising the elections, that discourage mentioning Karadzic and ethnic secession. And the OSCE has routinely failed to enforce the ban.

The party leaders pepper their speeches at rallies and on state-controlled radio and television with statements suggesting that Bosnia-Herzegovina does not exist. It is always “former Bosnia” and not recognized as a state.

They are careful, however, not to challenge the Dayton peace accord directly. Dayton, after all, recognized their own Republika Srpska, for the first time, as a legitimate “entity” equal to the Muslim-Croat federation, both being part of Bosnia-Herzegovina. It’s that last part that bothers the Serbian party leaders, whose reading of the Dayton accord favors not a multiethnic coexistence but, rather, clear division.

“To those who talk to us about living together again, we will answer, ‘No!’ ” the Serbs’ deputy prime minister, Velibor Ostojic, told the Foca crowd. Eventually, the crowd was told, it will be time to unite forces with Serbs eastward across the Drina River, in Serbia proper.

The Serbs’ campaign rhetoric flies in the face of repeated assurances from the international community’s leaders. And it is matched by the rest of the former Yugoslav federation’s ardent nationalists: Bosnian Croats of their ruling Croatian Democratic Union party, whose campaign rallies don’t even bother to include a Bosnian flag, and hard-liners from the ruling Muslim faction, the Party of Democratic Action.

“Talking in a secessionist fashion is very dangerous and raises the specter of war again,” said Colum Murphy, spokesman for the international community’s senior representative in Bosnia, Carl Bildt. “It is quite clear to anyone with eyes to see that the whole [peace] process is in danger.”

Krajisnik seems unrepentant. Speaking on Bosnian Serb television Sunday night, he referred to “our president Karadzic.” Then he quickly added: “I have to apologize to Mr. Bildt, because I’ve been told I’m not allowed to mention his name.”