| Michael
DOYLE
University of Princeton,
USA
Peace Piecemeal
The news from Bosnia makes
sustainable peace seem impossibly remote, more remote than it actually
is. The images are, indeed, bleak. In summer 2000 we saw pictures
of busloads of Muslim Bosniac women seeking justice for the massacre
of their husbands and sons that took place at Srebenica five years
ago and we saw the hostile reception they received from the current
Serb residents of Srebenica when the women returned for their ceremony
of remembrance. What we tend to overlook is that there is another
Bosnia where peace is being built, village by village, despite the
many acts ofnot-so-ancient hatred. Those village islands of peace
can be replicated.
In May 1992,
Serb paramilitaries “ethnically cleansed” the village of Klanac,
a Bosniacsuburb of Brcko in northern Bosnia. Repeatedly over the
past two years, the Bosniac "displaced persons" (DP’s,
or internal refugees) have attempted to return in order either to
reclaim their intact homes or rebuild the destroyed ones.
As has happened
many times elsewhere in Bosnia, each time the hopeful returnees
were met with a hail of stones thrown by present residents. Few
were surprised by the clashes. The Serbs in Klanac were thought
to be the most hardline opponents of reintegration. But the Serbs
were also victimized refugees, another displaced community who feared
being displaced once again.
But in mid-May,
less than a month after the latest clash, 60 Bosniac families began
work on their houses in the neighborhood.Serbs and Bosniacs have
formed a neighborhood committee. Serbs have expressed a willingness
to vacate the houses they are occupying.
Today, Serbs
are helping over 700 Bosniacs return. What happened? Part of the
credit belongs to the international community. The new Brcko District
of northern Bosnia is special, but its key features can be replicated.
The sticking point at the Dayton negotiations, Brcko is both the
strategic corridor linking the two halves of the Serb Republic "entity"
and the northern access route from the Bosniac-Croat Federation
"entity" to Croatia and Europe.
Irresolvable
at Dayton, the problem was handed over to international arbitration.
In a Solomonic decision last year, the international arbitrator,
US attorney Roberts Owen, made it an autonomous district of Bosnia,
owned by both entities but by neither exclusively. Earlier, he had
given nearly limitless authority to implement the arbitration to
Ambassador R.William Farrand, the international Supervisor of Brcko.
Relying on this authority, the backing of nearby SFOR troops and
the assistance of the UN police monitors, Farrand established the
only functioning multiethnic administration and police in Bosnia.
The District gave the displaced Serbs a sense that they could find
a new home and be safe and not be forced back into the Federation.
It was the multiethnic local police that quelled the last Klanac
riot.
The other
part of the credit belongs to the courage and common sense of the
Klanac residents, both Bosniac original and Serb current. Manipulated
for years by their hardline DP organizations and the ethnic political
parties that relied on them for cheap votes, both groups of DP’s
stood up for themselves and stretched a hand across the ethnic divide
when they saw a way to live together safely.Taking advantage of
an offer from Supervisor Farrand, the Serbs agreed to vacate the
Bosniac houses they occupied in return for free and secure landplots
elsewhere in the District. When the DP leadership organizations
balked at this sensible compromise and the new local District Assembly
hesitated to pass enabling legislation, the current Serb and prospective
Bosniac residents threatened to organize a multiethnic demonstration.
(This surely would have been Bosnia’s first.) The Assembly voted
wisely and Klanac is nowat peace.
The struggle
for a sustainable peace in Bosnia is far from over. Even in Brcko,
unemployment stands at sixty percent, organized smuggling is rampant,
ethnic tensions still simmer and sometimes boil over, thousands
more seek a return to their homes. But Klanac was an important step.
How many
potential Klanac’s does Bosnia have? Until recently, very very few.
But with the use of international authority, a continued SFOR presence,
active efforts to enlist moderate Bosnian leaders in the construction
of multiethnic institutions, the economic resources to design expanding-pie
solutions, and the courage and imagination of ordinary villagers;
perhaps, someday, many more.
Michael
Doyle has recently
returned from his third visit to Brcko. He teaches at Princeton
University, is the author of Ways of War and Peace, and is currently
working on a comparative study of peace processes in civil wars
at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford.
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