Power Sharing or Partition?
History's Lessons for Keeping the Peace in Bosnia
Alan J. Kuperman
Assistant Professor
LBJ School of Public Affairs
University of Texas, Austin
April 12, 2006
Bosnia is not necessarily over, especially if we continue our current policy. Why is Bosnia even a question? Even though we are ten years past the Dayton accords, and there hasn't been civil war since 1995, three factors are important: 1) supreme political authority still in hands of unelected international official; 2) security still ensured by international peacekeepers, though the number have dropped; 3) Bosnia is still composed of two separate political entities, one a Serb republic and the other a Muslim-Croat federation, and they still disagree about whether Bosnia should remain two separate loosely linked entities, or whether they should be merged.
So Bosnia is still in an unsustainable limbo. Unsustainable because 1) very costly to the international community; 2) EU has this ongoing accession process with other Balkan states—but Bosnia can't join until we decide what Bosnia is; 3) we have impending final status negotiation for neighboring Kosovo, and if that final status is settled prior to Bosnia's, there could be uproar in Bosnia.
The fundamental question today is the same one since the early 1990s, involving why the war broke out, why it continued, how it was settled, why we have a continuing dispute, and why war might erupt again. The Muslims, who represented a near majority, wanted a unitary state. The Serbs, about 30% of population, have insisted that they want Serb political control over Serb territory, where Serbs are majority or large plurality.
I don't mean to be alarmist. I don't think war is inevitable. And I don't ignore the down sides of partition, including the problem of contagion. If the Bosnian Serbs get their own state, the Albanians in Macedonia, the Albanians in Kosovo, and other ethnic concentrations in the former Yugoslavia will demand the same right. There is danger of a domino effect here, which is why I don't support a hard partition of Bosnia. But there are clearly some major risks in the status quo. Nick Burns has been pushing to give the Muslims the unitary state they have been demanding, and take away what the Serbs want.
Five Options are on the table:
1. Coerced unification. This is what we're currently doing, and I've discussed the downsides. Backfires by prompting Serb nationalism and possibly renewal of war.
2. Partition de jure, Kauffmann solution, which I think has dangerous contagion effects.
3. Adjust borders. Hold an international conference for all of the Balkans. It has been proposed every few years for hundreds of years in this region, yet it has never prevented war. This is impossible.
4. Freeze the status quo (limbo). This is not terrible, but I don't think it is sustainable, especially with Kosovo final status coming up, which is going to raise questions in Bosnia.
5. Regional autonomy. It is close to de facto partition, without the prize of independence. It is a compromise solution. It is closer to the partition side, but avoids rewarding militants with independence. Indeed, this is the option that could have averted war in the first place – giving the Serbs the one thing they have wanted, strong autonomy – and also was the promise in the Dayton accords that managed to end the war. I think this could also serve as model for Kosovo. Serbia doesn't want Kosovo to get independence, and Russia could prevent this with a veto in the UN Security Council. Whereas if we have strong regional autonomy that solves the Bosnia problem, we can insist on the same deal to the Kosovo Albanians.
http://web.mit.edu/ssp/seminars/wed_arc ... perman.htm
Do you support an independent Kurdistan?
For example if your minority is displaced from Cyprus and send back to Turkey it would be a similar situation. Think twice about what you wish for
