Bosnian President Resigns, Ending an Era in the Strife-Torn Balkans

Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, the last of the three Balkan leaders in power during a decade that witnessed devastating wars and bitter divisions, stepped down Saturday in recognition that both he and his ravaged republic need healing.

Izetbegovic had announced in June his decision to resign. But his actual departure, so soon after the ouster of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic earlier this month and the December death of Croatia’s nationalist president, Franjo Tudjman, stirred hopes in this troubled region that fresh air can be infused into the poisonous atmosphere created by four wars and millions displaced by “ethnic cleansing.”

Milosevic--who was elected president of Serbia, Yugoslavia’s main republic, in 1989--conceived a vision of a Greater Serbia that he used to incite Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, both formerly Yugoslav republics, to take up arms against their Yugoslav brothers. Tudjman conspired with him to divide Bosnia between them so he could expand Croatia.

Izetbegovic’s legacy is unscathed by such territorial ambitions, as he was seen during the 1992-95 siege of his republic as the lone champion of ethnic peace and coexistence. But his resort to using Muslim fundamentalist fighters from abroad to help defend the besieged country discredited him in the eyes of many of his countrymen, including Slavic Muslims.

The three ethnic leaders were the official signatories to the 1995 Dayton peace accords that ended the Bosnian war, and in an irony befitting the intricacies of the Balkans, the prospects for implementing Dayton’s provisions for reintegration and recovery look all the more promising with the guarantors’ departure.

“Those who led in war cannot lead in peace,” said Jacques Paul Klein, the U.N. special representative and coordinator of recovery programs for Bosnia, although he praised Izetbegovic for voluntarily allowing his still bitterly divided country to turn a new page.

Who will succeed Izetbegovic as the Bosnian member of the rotating three-member presidency will be decided only after elections for a new parliament next month and the wrangling expected among the new legislators, which is likely to run into the spring. Meanwhile, the head of the Bosnian parliament will fill the figurehead role.

What has given Balkan analysts and advisors the greatest grounds for hope in a speedier postwar recovery is the political demise of Milosevic, whose support of proxies in the Serbian half of Bosnia, the Republika Srpska, has slowed the return of Muslims and Croats expelled from the territory during the war.

Although the rump Yugoslavia’s new president, Vojislav Kostunica, had close ties with Bosnian Serb leader and indicted war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic, he has promised Western envoys flooding into Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, since his inauguration Oct. 7 that he will uphold the principles of Dayton.

“Kostunica has said he is not for a Greater Serbia, and that scotches plans for a lot of people here,” said James Lion, director of the Bosnian mission of the International Crisis Group, which monitors global hot spots and seeks to foster the rise of democratic institutions.

After the death of Tudjman, whose denial of advancing terminal cancer prevented his arranging a successor to carry on his nationalist policies, Croats elected a more democracy-oriented leader in Stipe Mesic, and Tudjman’s hard-line nationalist Croatian Democratic Union, the HDZ, suffered badly at the polls.

With Kostunica and his 18-party coalition striving to install a similarly reformist regime in Belgrade, Klein noted that the Balkans Stability Pact approved last year by the United States and the European Union for reconstruction aid in the region finally has a chance of reaching its intended recipients. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombardment of Danube bridges in Yugoslavia last year inflicted severe economic damage downstream in Bulgaria and Romania, and the isolation of Yugoslavia until Kostunica’s election meant that little could be done to restore vital Danube traffic.

Perhaps most important, at least for Bosnia, has been the signal sent to voters here that the nationalist agenda is no longer holding sway in other republics and should be abandoned in Bosnia as well, said Dieter Woltmann, deputy head of the Sarajevo mission for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

“Voters here will see that change is possible,” said Woltmann, predicting a modest downturn in support for the most strident nationalist ethnic parties in Bosnia’s Nov. 11 parliamentary elections.

Most analysts in the region have hailed the swift lifting of some sanctions against Yugoslavia after Milosevic was ousted, arguing that the relief should reinforce the West’s message that recovery aid is available for those who abandon the path of violence and ethnic domination.

Even the Bosnian leaders who fear that the West’s rush to bolster Kostunica smacks of another grasp at a quick-fix solution concede that the disappearance of Milosevic is undeniably a step in the right direction of mending the broken Balkans.

“The shadow of the leaders who engineered ethnic cleansing and indirectly blocked the return of refugees--they are gone now,” noted Ejup Ganic, president of Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat entity, which makes up the rest of the country apart from the Republika Srpska.

“If [Kostunica] is wise and has vision, he has a historic opportunity to put Serbia on the right course,” said Ganic. But he cautioned the international community against inflated expectations, saying small steps and close supervision are necessary at this critical juncture to steer the unabashedly nationalist Kostunica toward regional cooperation.

Although all three ethnic factions within Bosnia complain about an agonizingly slow reversal of “ethnic cleansing”--the aim of resettling more than 2 million people displaced by the war--there has been meager and lopsided progress. The U.N. mission has reported 140,000 minority returns in recent months, more than 80% of them Serbs reclaiming their homes in towns and cities now dominated by Croats and Muslims.

The departure of the wartime leaders could hasten the pace of returns, because the Srpska authorities have no backing in Belgrade to thwart the objectives of Dayton and the man Srpska leaders have cast as a Muslim fundamentalist threat for Serbs--Izetbegovic--is no longer in service as that straw man.

“We will be less vulnerable to such arbitrary attacks,” said Ganic, who broke with Izetbegovic after the war to protest what he saw as the latter’s misplaced priorities. Much of the aid from supportive Muslim countries sent to Bosnia since Dayton has been spent on mosques and religious education--something many Bosnians dislike, as the majority are secular and would rather see factories, schools and social institutions rebuilt first.

With Izetbegovic’s retirement and impending elections that might produce a slightly less strident nationalistic power structure, Bosnia and the rest of the Balkans may finally be positioned to start moving on.

“A lot of people have said for a long time that what is needed is a change from the wartime leadership,” said a senior Western diplomat here who predicted a slight drop in nationalist voting next month. “They bring too much baggage with them.”