Open letter and analysis that the member of BiH Presidency Dr Haris Silajdzic addressed to the leaders of PIC member countries, European Union and NATO, regarding key issues in Bosnia and Herzegovina e.g. state property and census.

Excellency,

I write to draw your attention to the continued activities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which have recently grown in frequency and intensity, to undermine the Dayton Peace Agreement and to effectively renegotiate some of its core principles.

Thirteen years after the Dayton Peace Agreement, we are witnessing the final stages of an attempt to transform Bosnia and Herzegovina into a weak union of its two entities. While the plan that Milosevic and his followers concocted for Bosnia and Herzegovina has not changed, it appears that the international community’s willingness to accept it has changed. If that is indeed the case, this tactic is certain to further undermine the stability of Bosnia and Herzegovina and encourage nationalistic forces in the neighbourhood that have been the cause of the cataclysm in the former Yugoslavia in the first place.

The lack of implementation of Dayton’s provisions, coupled by orchestrated obstructions, has solidified ethnic divisions, both physical and psychological. It has preserved and strengthened ethnically clean territories that were initially created through gross violations of peremptory norms of international law, including genocide that was confirmed as such by the International Court of Justice in a first such ruling in history. Paradoxically, this is happening to a country that has for centuries served as a model of multi-culturalism, but it seems that this model is obsolete at the beginning of the 21st century, of the global melting pot. Any attempt to correct this course is dubbed by some representatives of the international community in Bosnia and Herzegovina as “backward looking”. It follows that the forward looking would be given full legitimacy to Milosevic’s and Karadzic’s project in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is, at best, the apartheid. We already do have segregated schools which I consider to be a disgrace for us in Bosnia and for the international community as well. Bosnia and Herzegovina appears to be on the outside of the changes sweeping the world of which the change in the United States of America is the best example. To be sure there are positive results too but the current strategy is not conducive to creating an integrated society able to interact with democratic societies in Europe and elsewhere.

It appears that the status quo created by genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes has acquired a degree of sanctity in Bosnia and Herzegovina and that genocide and ethnic cleansing are being rewarded. Excessive pragmatism coupled with political expediency displayed in Bosnia and Herzegovina threatens to distort beyond recognition the basic values and standards codified in the UN Charter and various conventions.

Considering the fact that progress that Bosnia and Herzegovina has made over the years was largely the result of decisions imposed by the Office of the High Representative, it is inexplicable that some in the international community are not only ready to bless OHR’s exit from Bosnia and Herzegovina, but are ready to do so after creating conditions that further erode some of Dayton’s core principles.

The two issues that have precipitated this letter are the status of state property and the population census. The first issue concerns the attempt to legalise disposition of the state property which has occurred since 1992, contrary to the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Agreement on Succession Issues of the former Yugoslavia. The attempt also includes the so-called territorial principle which is, nota bene, used only in cases of state dissolution as in the case of Serbia and Montenegro. This exemplifies the decision from 1998 to carry out the entity-based privatization of the public property that has had a devastating affect on our economic potential, which is a mistake we must not repeat in the case of state property. 

The second issue concerns the attempt to legalise genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Herzegovina by allowing the census with ethno-cultural data to proceed before the return of refugees is completed, as mandated by Annex 7 of the Dayton Peace Agreement. All this is occurring despite the ruling of the International Court of Justice on genocide in Bosnia as well as various UN resolutions, including Resolution 56/83 which mandates that no state shall recognise the situation created by a breach of peremptory norms of international law, nor render aid or assistance in maintaining that situation.

I must regretfully add that any opposition to such a course is immediately qualified as intransigence. While in other countries denial of genocide is punishable by law, any mention of genocide that occurred 13 years ago in Bosnia is met with disdain regardless of the fact that Karadzic is on trial at the ICTY, whose outcome we are awaiting, charged with multiple genocides across Bosnia. Resolutions of institutions such as EU Parliament and the Council of Europe, which clearly state that provisions of the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina must be changed, are qualified as non-binding. It should also be noted that for more than a decade now attempts have been made, through concrete actions, to fully implement the Dayton Peace Agreement but obstructions stood in the way and the results have been mixed at best.

Unless the international community reassesses its current tactics with respect to Bosnia and Herzegovina, the country will soon enter the most precarious phase of its existence since the end of the war. Acquiescing to the demands of the Republika Srpska entity (one of the two entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina) would not help reverse this process. After the OHR withdrawal and the weakening of the state, all blockade mechanisms will remain. The Republika Srpska entity will be emboldened by gains that not even Milosevic could obtain, and will continue to block Bosnia and Herzegovina in exercising its responsibilities especially after the reduction of such responsibilities. The end result will be further stagnation of the state, and a Bosnia and Herzegovina that is unable to speak with a single voice or operate as a single state.

Excellency,

An overall majority of citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina strongly support Bosnia and Herzegovina’s membership in the European Union. In order to make progress in achieving that goal I am not asking you for the imposition of all solutions for Bosnia and Herzegovina, but I am asking you not to impose those values and standards that are clearly not European and certainly not Bosnian.

For more detailed information, please find enclosed an addendum.

Sincerely,

Dr. Haris Silajdzic