Let Bosnia Be Serb, Croat and Muslim

Writing two millennia ago of the Roman legislative process, the Latin poet Horace lamented, “The mountains went into labor; a small, ridiculous mouse was born.” These words aptly describe this month’s elections in Bosnia. After four years of effort by the international community, we are back at square one of February 1992, when the fateful referendum on Bosnian independence took place.

At that time, the Muslims, in an uneasy relationship with the Croats, voted for independence from the disintegrating Yugoslavia. The Bosnian Serbs, unwilling to accept minority status in the new Bosnia, opted for self-determination as a separate entity. Compromise proved impossible. Civil war was the result.

Four years later, nothing has changed. Despite U.S. denials, ethnicity runs like a spinal cord through the Dayton-designed constitution. Voting took place on exclusively ethnic lines. Nationalists are in control. Partition is in the air. Reconciliation is nowhere. This is all as it was in 1992.

The allocation of blame will fill a thousand Ph.D. theses and revisionist memoirs. Let the past bury its dead. The more immediate need is to avoid new mistakes. As it plans the next steps in Bosnia, the international community needs to ask itself some tough questions. A little history review would be a good start.

The key period is the first quarter of 1992. By then the new republics of Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia had been recognized, acknowledging the Serb, Slovene and Croatian wish for ethnically separate nationhood. The Macedonians were headed in the same direction.

The international community decided that the inhabitants of Bosnia--Muslims, Serbs and Croats, with no group forming a majority--should behave differently. While everyone else was allowed ethnic self-determination, the component ethnic groups in Bosnia would be denied this privilege. Whether they wanted to or not, they would have to live together in a single national unit.

Four years of war have demonstrated how foolish it was to have resisted the local pressures for territorial realignment within Bosnia. After countenancing a series of secessions from Yugoslavia, why did the West deem Bosnia’s boundaries to be untouchable? In 1995, the Dayton agreement explicitly accepts the reality of Bosnian Serb and Croat separateness. The 1996 election confirms precisely this reality. Had this view prevailed in 1992, the war might have been avoided.

The thread running through Western policy was that it sought to impose its own centralized precepts on Bosnia. In the face of the disaster resulting from this approach, a little humility might be expected, a little more readiness to work with the grain of local conditions. Counting the 1990 vote, three elections have produced identical results. It is time to respect these expressions of popular will. If this means partition, so be it. Instead, the U.S. is proceeding with misguided plans to train and equip a new Bosnian national army, the most likely use for which would be minority suppression within Bosnia.

An even worse mistake relates to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Established in 1994 as a sop to the international conscience, its main contribution has been to fan ethnic tensions. Its head, Judge Richard Goldstone of South Africa, has asked for expanded powers. These should not be granted. The tribunal should be wrapped up in favor of a better model, to be found, ironically, in South Africa. Here, the new government has responsibly resisted calls for a generalized settling of scores. Instead, it has established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to hear cases concerning crimes from the apartheid era. The commission is neither a whitewash nor an inquisition, but a healing process. There is a strong voluntary component. Most of all, it is in the hands of indigenous people, coming to grips with their own history and future.

Allowing local people to take charge of their own destinies can produce admirable results. An example? This week, Romania and Hungary signed a treaty of Understanding, Cooperation and Good Neighborliness. The treaty defuses a potential ethnic powder-keg in central Europe. Significantly, it was negotiated without the help of grandstanding do-gooders.

Regional devolution is good American political philosophy. It is the principle behind the movement to transfer responsibility back to the states. This does not mean that the international community can wash its hands of Bosnia. Help, especially in the form of police services, will be needed for some time. But Bosnia has suffered from a surfeit of self-appointed busybodies. It is time for them to get out of the driving seat.