http://www.stratfor.com/products/premium/read_article.php?id=287929&selected=Analyses
Croatia: Fueling or Dampening the Rising Balkan Conflict?
April 30, 2007 22 51 GMT
Summary
The „political father“ of modern-day Croatia, Ivica Racan, died April 29, leaving the country without the leader who brought it closer to the West. Racan’s death comes at a time when Croatia’s neighbors are facing internal instability, which means Croatia must decide either to break from its Western path and radicalize or to work with its new Western partners toward a more European solution to problems in the Balkans.
Analysis
Ivica Racan, the „political father“ of modern-day Croatia, died April 29 of brain cancer, leaving the country without the leader who moved it closer to the West. Racan is known for democratizing Croatia by battling Serbian nationalist leader Slobodan Milosevic, organizing Croatia’s first democratic elections, cleaning up the country after the Balkan wars and creating Croatia’s relationship with the European Union.
Racan’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SDP), along with a handful of moderate and left parties, created a coalition that has counterbalanced the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) since 2003. The HDZ gained enormous support in the 2003 elections when it shifted away from its ultra-nationalist policies and „reformed“ itself into a more moderate right-wing party. HDZ has made great leaps since then in developing ties with the European Union and Western institutions, making policies that mirror those of Racan’s SDP. However, the personalities within the two parties have kept them vehemently opposed — not because of policy, but due to personal scandals and politicking.
With the death of SDP’s beloved and symbolic leader, the moderate-left coalition could dissolve in the short term. Racan hand-picked and groomed his political successor, Zoran Milanovic, to handle Croatia’s domestic and foreign political future. The problem is that Milanovic is young — he recently turned 40 — and has not had the time to consolidate a following within Croatia. It will most likely take some time, with Racan gone, for Milanovic to muster his forces. This will leave HDZ to sweep the parliamentary elections in November. This will not change the fact that Croatia is on an almost-certain path to EU and NATO membership, but it will change the balance of power in the Balkans — where tensions are escalating.
Rising Tensions
Tensions in the Balkans are rising on two major fronts: Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Serbia is still without a government after months of political wrangling — and with a deadline to form a government quickly approaching (May 14). This deadline comes as Serbia’s secessionist region of Kosovo says it will gain (or unilaterally declare) its controversial independence by the end of May. The entire international community has been watching Kosovo and Serbia in an attempt to prevent any destabilization — especially of the ethnic cleansing kind — of the Balkans in the process.
The problem is that while the world has focused on Serbia and Kosovo, it has ignored a quickly rising problem in Serbia’s neighbor, Bosnia-Herzegovina. The United Nations and European Union have been pulling resources — everything from negotiators to security forces — from Bosnia-Herzegovina to Kosovo, leaving all the different Bosnian ethnicities to fight it out without much supervision. Meanwhile, Bosnian Serb leader and nationalist Milorad Dodik has been consolidating power in Bosnia — not only in the Serbian autonomous region of Republika Srpska, of which he is prime minister, but on the federal level as well — so much that he has been called an up-and-coming Milosevic replacement.
International security officials within the country have said the political situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina has gotten worse in the past year than in all the short history of the state since the 1995 Dayton Accords. The entire country is in a deadlock as its three ethnic groups — the Bosnian Muslims (called Bosniacs), Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs — fight over police, constitutional and media reform. Ethnic tensions have not been this obvious since the end of the 1992-1995 war between the Bosnian Serbs and a Croat-Bosniac quasi-alliance, which left more than 100,000 dead.
In the past year, Dodik has actively shaken things up. He battled to gain his fellow Serbs the most important offices in the federal government (the interior, economic and prime ministerial posts), called for Republika Srpska to secede and create a „Greater Serbia“ with its neighbor; consolidated the Serbian front against the fractured Croat and Muslim groups and even incited a Croat secessionist movement.
Croatia’s Reaction
Since the end of the Balkan wars, the Serbs and Croats have competed as they race for NATO membership, but the competition is more serious within Bosnia, where their ethnic identities are at stake. Croatia would respond to a destabilization in Kosovo, Serbia or Bosnia-Herzegovina in order to protect not only itself, but also ethnic Croats outside of its borders. The ruling HDZ currently is the main group responsible for funding that campaign and organizing funds and other assistance crossing the border to ethnic Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Though they did not prevent or want to prevent it, Racan and his party long kept that assistance to a level they thought of as an obligation without allowing the support to reach levels that the European Union would see as destabilizing. Without Racan, if the HDZ does sweep the upcoming elections, any internal levers for restricting assistance to the Bosnian Croats is gone.
The one external lever that could restrict Croatia is its integration into the West — moreover, its deep relationship with EU heavyweight Germany. Croatia’s relationship with Germany dates back to World War II, and current Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader boasts about being a close personal friend of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Croatia depends on Germany’s political sway and economic investments for its future in the West.
If Germany wants to counterbalance the instability from both a Kosovar decision and Republika Srpska activism, it will have to harness Croatia’s instincts to radicalize, and use the country for European purposes. This will be the first time that Croatia will make such a large choice without Racan’s moderating voice. However, unless Croatia wants to be sucked back into — or even escalate — the Balkan conflicts it has worked so hard to detach itself from, it will have to take up Racan’s legacy and make good use of Germany’s backing in the struggle for a solution.
http://www.stratfor.com/products/premium/read_article.php?id=289252
Bosnia-Herzegovina: Dodik’s Stand
May 25, 2007 17 51 GMT
Summary
The U.S. State Department meeting with Bosnia-Herzegovina’s fighting leaders — Milorad Dodik, prime minister of the Serbian entity Republika Srpska, and Haris Silajdzic, leader of the Bosnian Muslim community — has failed. The meeting ended with Dodik storming out after a series of threats and exchanges between him and U.S. Ambassador to Sarajevo Douglas McElhaney. McElhaney has threatened to have Dodik removed from office and Dodik has dared him to try, especially since Dodik knows the West already has its hands full with one conflict in the Balkans and is anxious about risking a second — and possibly larger — one.
Analysis
Bosnia-Herzegovina’s two rival leaders — Serbian entity Republika Srpska’s Prime Minister Milorad Dodik and Haris Silajdzic, leader of the Muslim community in Bosnia-Herzegovina — failed in their May 22-24 talks with U.S. State Department officials in Washington. The talks, designed to negotiate constitutional agreements between the two sides, ended late May 24 after Dodik stormed out of the meeting. He is returning to Republika Srpska on May 25.
Silajdzic has been in the United States since May 21, when Bosnia-Herzegovina celebrated the 15th anniversary of its U.N. membership. It was unclear at first whether Dodik would attend the meeting; on his way to the meeting, he called it „unnecessary“ and a waste of his time because he knew that neither he nor Silajdzic would budge from their positions.
Bosnia-Herzegovina has been deadlocked since the Dayton Accords gave thecountry its current configuration in early 1995. The accords — designed by theUnited Nations after the Bosnian War — set up Bosnia-Herzegovina under three ethnicities: the Serbs, the Croats and the Muslims (known as Bosniacs). The three sides have operated under the sharp U.N. eye, with the international body setting up a high representative office to have the final political say. Bosnia-Herzegovina is split into two entities: Republika Srpska, which has an ethnically Serbian majority, and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is majority Muslim but with a large Croat community. The country has three governments — one for each ethnicity — and one central government with three presidents. As if this were not confusing enough, each government also has its own constitution and police force. It is this last point that has caused such fierce debate among the groups. The United Nations is requiring Bosnia-Herzegovina to ratify one common constitution and one unified police force in which each ethnicity plays an active part.
Dodik recently launched a large campaign for reforms countering the West’s proposals. Dodik says Muslim extremist movements have been growing exponentially in Bosnia-Herzegovina and that Republic Srpska cannot agree to a unified police force that would leave the Serbs undefended. Dodik even pushed through the central government’s parliament a law that will begin investigations into Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina who were naturalized after the Bosnian War. The law has already stripped 488 Muslims of their citizenship, and another 1,500 could be deported. The Muslim community has expressed its outrage over the new law and over Dodik. Dodik also is preparing a formal proposal for „federalized units“ within Bosnia-Herzegovina that would not be allowed to be mixed ethnically. The Bosniacs have called this ethnic segregation with the potential for ethnic cleansing as seen in the past, but the Croats — who are just as nationalist as the Serbs — also are behind the plan.
In response to Dodik’s bold moves, many within Bosnia-Herzegovina have called for the U.N. high representative to step in, but that office is in transition; former U.N. High Representative Christian Schwartz-Schilling will pass the reigns to Miroslav Lajcak of Slovakia in June. Lajcak has already threatened to remove Dodik from his premiership; Dodik said Republika Srpska would not accept the high representative „using its authority to impose solutions or dismiss people“ and would not concede „even if the high representative sends a battering ram before its headquarters.“
This same threat prompted Dodik to storm out of the meetings in Washington. Dodik’s exit is said to have come after a heated exchange with U.S. Ambassador to Sarajevo Douglas McElhaney. Dodik replied to McElhaney’s threat of removal by saying the United States cannot remove him because the people of Republika Srpska would not stand for it and, moreover, because Dodik had „higher friends“ in Washington than McElhaney who would not allow Bosnia-Herzegovina to destabilize when there are already other problems in the region.
Dodik is not very likely to have „higher friends“ in Washington, but it is true that a destabilized Bosnia-Herzegovina would be a disaster for the West, which is already preoccupied with the growing threats in Serbia and its secessionist region of Kosovo. It would be catastrophic for the West to have to take on two conflicts in the Balkans at once. Dodik has dared the West to move against him. Not only does the West have the legal authority to remove him from his post, it also is anxious to get rid of such an unpredictable leader and will use any excuse to do so after the headaches Dodik has caused. However, Dodik is returning to Republic Srpska, where he will begin rallying his support, which could set off a big — and possibly bloody — battle if he is pushed from office.
