by Zeljko CVIJANOVIC
The story about the recognition of danger today, in Bosnia that has been avoided this year by all the fortunate Balkan denouements, closely resembles Cvorovic's farce. As late as yesterday many, especially foreigners, believed that it would be enough to chase off the scene leather coats of Franjo Tudman's and Slobodan Milosevic's nationalism to turn Bosnia into a country where life is at least bearable. Philosophically speaking, it is correct that evil has a greater capability of spreading than good, but evil spreads only where it is wanted and where it already exists. Although Bosnia is not Andric's letter from 1920 [a very bleak portrayal of Bosnia and Bosnians], which is today used by nationalists in leather coats, it is neither the country of good and naïve people misled by the words from the neighborhood, as nationalists with ties would have us believe.
Why are Silajdzic and Ivanic nationalists: Therefore, once they disappeared it turned out that two wartime comrades from Karadjordjevo are equally guilty, but also that there is much more guilt to spread around than the two of them can be bear. How much more, wonder those who believed that Bosnian Croats would learn to love Zlatko Lagumdzija and Ivo Komsic, or at least Kresimir Zubak and Jadranko Prlic, after Tudman. How much more, wonder those who expected that after Milosevic's fall Milorad Dodik would be able to ride on a white horse out of his hometown Laktasi. How much more? Enough for one SDS, HDZ, and SDA? Unfortunately, that is wrong.
If you ask today any moderate Bosnian Serb or Croat whether Haris Silajdzic is a nationalist, very few would claim that he isn't. But Silajdzic's discourse is definitely not the claustrophobic discourse of Dzemaludin Latic. On the contrary, it is a moralistic political discourse that was implanted in a small number of Bosnian officials by the Clinton era American administration.
"Mladen Ivanic's nationalist views are well known. Will that be an obstacle to all of this (cooperation within the Alliance for changes)?", a (fired up) Bosniak journalist asked Zlatko Lagumdzija. On the other hand, very few Bosniaks, especially among those who support Silajdzic, would agree that Silajdzic is a nationalist. The number of Serbs who would not be offended if you told them that Ivanic was a nationalist is similarly small.
However, if one examines the election mathematics more closely, one reaches the conclusion that the SDA is today weaker exactly for the votes taken by Silajdzic and a few others, that the SDS is weaker exactly for the votes pinched by Ivanic, Dodik and others. However, as far as the story about nationalism is concerned (and as far as I understand nationalism was the question of all questions in the previous elections) it is far more important what Bosniaks think about Ivanic, than what Serbs think about him, just as Silajdzic's image in Banja Luka is much more important than his image in Sarajevo.
Of course, this is not a story about Ivanic, a new Serb favorite among foreigners, nor Silajdzic, their old flame. They are only somewhat more important than a random sample. Even Alija Izetbegovic and Dragan Kalinic would find the assertion that they are nationalists offensive, while Tudman and Milosevic would also find a way to even posthumously deny such an assertion.
The problem is the following: the problem of nationalism in Bosnia, today, five years after the Dayton Agreement, cannot anymore be boiled down to national[ist] parties. The international community has revised its recent conviction that a happy end would happen in Sarajevo, Mostar, and Banja Luka as soon as it happens in Zagreb and Belgrade exactly in that direction. However, in five years, nationalist virus has mutated, left the leather coat of nationalist parties and put on a tie. Besides, didn't after Dayton the Bosniak nationalists fear Dodik and his support from abroad more than predictable ("no, no, and no") Momcilo Krajisnik? Don't Serb nationalists view Izetbegovic as a good-natured grandfather in comparison with Silajdzic?
Lagumdzija's "economic state-making": Therefore, the deeply divided society is a far bigger problem of Bosnia than nationalist parties. It is true that those parties did divide the society. However, can their heirs again bring it together? No. Why?
This is how Lagumdzija, the originator of the idea about the Alliance for Changes, responds to the question about Ivanic's nationalism: "I have a thousand and one complaints about political statements and ideas of many individuals from political parties with which we intend to cooperate. Not only Mladen Ivanic, but also many others. However, the issue is not how to identify differences between us, but how to identify something that we could work on during the next two years."
And here is Lagumdzija's view of that "something" that unifies all parties in Bosnia-Hercegovina against the nationalist trio: "These issues are above all, fight against corruption, and then fight against corruption. And all that can be achieved by establishing state institutions and thereby initiating the economic transition reforms. These reforms would increase the assistance coming from Europe and the rest of the world to this country and establish conditions for the arrival of direct foreign investment."
His "economic state-making" is far from ill-intentioned, although it would be interesting to see him fighting corruption together with Milorad Dodik. But, says Lagumdzija, Dodik is not to be blamed, the problem is that BH does not have established state institutions. Lagumdzija does not get into why BH does not have these institutions, since he is an ambitious politician who hopes that Serbs from the RS will one day vote for him. From that point of view, Sialjdzic is much more honest. There should be no RS, and there will be institutions, he addresses the essential issue. Ivanic is also more honest when he threatens that there will be no institutions because the RS will secede if Silajdzic keeps insisting.
And that is the true source of problems - the non-existent constitutional definition of BH. The Dayton Agreement, which defines the common state as something more than a confederation and less than a federation, was ideal for both sets of nationalists with ties, but also made sure that even those politicians who are not nationalists appear that way from the point of view of the other two nations. Then, while the nationalists in leather coats used the motto "we get the land, and they get whatever is under", the nationalists in ties prefer the attitude "we will do as we please, and who gives a damn about them". The result of that problem is that Serbs detect that attitude in the rhetoric of all the parties registered in Sarajevo, just as Bosniaks detect the same attitude in the rhetoric of all the parties from the RS.
Why does everyone look the same in the dark: On the other hand, exactly that vagueness of the Peace Agreement prevents most politicians from both entities from going below the national minimum. If Lagumdzija, who claims to be working equally for Serbs and Bosniaks (although that is not true, nor can be without the definition of that framework) made a concession to the national Serbs and said - let's sort that out and turn BH into a confederation - he would lose Bosniak support, just as Ivanic would lose Serb support if he opted for a federation. In the meantime, exactly because of a lack of defined framework, Bosniaks will do everything possible to make the commonwealth as centralized as possible (who gives a damn about what Serbs and Croats think) and Serbs and Croats will do everything they can to make is as loose as possible (who gives a damn what Bosniaks think).
That is why the alliance of the deal-maker Zlatko Lagumdzija that will fight "against corruption and against corruption" is not a solution for Bosnia, especially not for the Republic of Srpska (RS), where the balance of power is even less favorable for the parties considered by foreigners not to be nationalist. A minimum that these parties would have to achieve to make that alliance truly functional is a definition of a constitutional framework for Bosnia-Hercegovina (BH). Otherwise, they will keep pulling to "their" side without Kalinic, Izetbegovic, and Ante Jelavic, but keep pulling to "their" side nevertheless.
But why would we have to do define the constitutional framework, reckon BH politicians, if foreigners do not care about that. The answer is - exactly because of that. Foreigners would much rather try to push through a common military, united (and privatized) electrical utility companies, strengthened central institutions. Then, they figure, someone in Banja Luka will realize that the RS cannot exist without these institutions and will agree to get more closely integrated with Sarajevo. But that will not happen because the thinking in the RS goes like this: they will tire and leave at some point. We must persist.
That is why the story about the Alliance for Changes or the RS government including the SDS merely confuses the issues. Kalinic may be excluded from the government, but Dodik and Ivanic would have to move to the right to compensate for that, exactly to the extent they have been pushed in that direction by the illogical attempt to define the constitutional position of the RS before that of BH is defined. But foreigners from Sarajevo will send a clear message to their bosses: we've chased away the nationalists. However, nothing works here, but that is because they are all crazy.
Therefore, the answer to the question whether the RS will enter BH or the other way round, and whether all three nations will be deeply split everywhere in Bosnian territory, is a democratic issue. That implies these days increasingly popular "improvement" of the Dayton Agreement that would move in the direction of the constitutional definition of BH, in order to allow everyone to know within which framework they can act. It also implies public promotion of all other principles demanded from Bosnian politicians, rather than making of backroom deals, so dear exactly to the nationalists and corrupt politicians who only know how to stutter their "everything will be fine" behind the lowered curtains. Besides, in the darkness of secretive agreements and deals, Izetbegovic and Lagumdzija, Krajisnik and Ivanic, Jelavic and Prlic, look the same, especially to those from the other darkness. In the darkness, everyone is a nationalist.