Transatlantic Politics

In the aftermath of the Bosnian conflict, Europe has both Iranian political elements and Al Qaeda affiliates just a short train ride from Vienna. This short video by Sky News summarizes the situation pretty well. Experts estimate that between 1,000 and 6,000 foreign fighters made their way to Bosnia and Kosovo to fight alonside fellow Muslims. Many of these fighters were battle-hardened veterans of the Soviet-Afghan conflict. 

Al Qaeda's presence is of course a politically-loaded issue and the truth has no doubt been skewed in the process; Serbs tend to over-exaggerate the problem and many Bosnian and Kosovar Muslims deny it exists. But discoveries like this last month in Novi Pazar, show that there is legitimate reason for concern.

The growth of Sunni fundamentalism in the Balkans was encouraged (in some instances, directly supported) by Saudi Arabia in an effort to counter-balance the influence gained by Iran (see my previous post ).  So far, nothing suggests that these influences have been put in check, making now an especially absurd time for the EU to take a lower profile in the region.

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The Iranian Cultural Center in Sarajevo is a busy place. As I wrote the other day, the story in Bosnia is far from over. Among many other problems, Iran's continued presence in the region is a destabilizing influence that may undermine both local politics and European security.

When the Bosnian conflict heated up in the early 1990s, a geopolitical vacuum formed as the EU and US rushed to bury their heads in the sand. While the international community debated the merits of intervention, Bosnian Muslims faced a well armed and organized Serbian militia — a disadvantage further exacerbated by the UN arms embargo. But other countries were in the market for friends and were happy to pay in guns. Iran in particular was more than willing to help the Bosnians even the odds.

Iran's arm shipments first arrived in Croatia, which was also outmatched by Serbian hardware. For instance, in 1992, the CIA reported a Iranian Air 747 at the Zagreb airport, which was loaded with small arms, ammunition, anti-tank weapons and other military supplies. After the truce between Croatia and Bosnia, Iran used Croatia as a middleman to pass weapons on to the ABiH — with Zagreb skimming 30% to 50% in the process.

A number of countries were uncomfortable with situation, perhaps most importantly Saudi Arabia. The Saudis had been applying pressure on the Clinton administration to both intervene on the Muslims behalf and squeeze Tehran out of the region.

On the domestic front, Congress was not happy that the Clinton administration had allowed Iran to play a free hand. The House of Representatives International Relations Committee hearing on the matter kicked off with Chairman Gilman asking the Ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, to "…please explain to the committee why the administration did not inform the American people, the Congress, even our allies of its decision to permit Iran, the world's leading terrorist state, a rogue state, to ship arms to Bosnia and thus gain a major foothold in the Balkans."

The combination of the foreign and domestic pressure eventually led the US to supply weapons directly to Bosnia through nighttime air-drops. The wisdom of this approach was questionable because it didn't address the Bosnians lack of military organization and merely fueled weapons trafficking after the conflict. Furthermore, the US supplied arms had negligible impact on the war's outcome and were too late to abrogate Iranian influence.

In the end, the reaction to Bosnia was an absolute transatlantic foreign policy debacle, that by some miracle, did not end in total disaster — though not for lack of trying.

*A lot of the background info in this post comes from Cees Wiebes book, Intelligence and the War in Bosnia, 1992-1995 .

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Last month, the EU announced a major troop reduction for the Bosnian peacekeeping force and extended the Office of the High Representative (OHR) until June 2008. But despite the extension of the OHR, the EU seems increasingly squeamish about exercising its authority, favoring instead less invasive forms of soft power.

Former High Representative, Paddy Ashdown, responded to the recent political anemia with a cautionary message. Though Ashdown supports the troop reduction — a return to large scale conflict is unlikely — he is critical of Brussels' weak resolve:

Below the level of state institutions, the bureaucratic monster created by the Dayton Agreement to govern a country of 3.5 million people still exists. The U.S.-led attempt to reform this dysfunctional muddle of interlocking bureaucracies failed last year, chiefly because the European Union was not prepared to make constitutional reform a condition for EU membership.

Western policymakers are still too often bewitched by the fantasies of the early post-cold war.

In the early 1990s, communism imploded and liberal democracy was pronounced the victorious ideology (e.g. Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man). The future looked bright. Moscow was just a quaint Eastern European backwater sitting on a pile of nukes and nothing stood in the way democracy and stable government sweeping the globe. All we have to do is let them vote, right?

Of course, we have learned — most painfully in Iraq — that democracy does not appear at the wave of a magic wand. Democracy depends on institutions, and building them from scratch takes time — gobs of it. But contrary to the cynics, the task is not beyond the reach of the undeveloped world. It's not that nation-building is impossible, its just that we rarely have the attention span or conviction to see it through. It should be no surprise that Bosnia has not developed in leaps and bounds in a decade, on the contrary, it would be more shocking if a country marred by centuries of conflict and misgovernment morphed into a western democracy as soon as we built them a post office.

It may be counterintuitive to idealists, but the road to a stable democracy may be anything but democratic. Watching fledgling African democracies repeatedly cannibalize themselves should have taught us that much.

In Bosnia's case, the EU just doesn't have the guts to go Hobbesian, even though a lapse in order could have dire consequences. Ashdown writes:

Bosnia is held on the road to reform by the magnetic pull of the European Union and NATO and the tough push of the power of sanctions vested in the High Representative by the Dayton Agreement. In the last year, the pull of the EU has visibly weakened as European capitals have become more skeptical about further enlargement. The push of threatened sanctions has all but vanished. In consequence, local politicians have felt free to return to old habits rather than grasp new opportunities. The forces of radical Islam are showing renewed interest in the country, having been comprehensively rebuffed by the determined moderation of Bosnian Muslims in the past.

There are still opportunities to be had, however. Even when the OHR expires in 2008, the EU will not lose all of its coercive power. There are plenty of carrots along the road to EU membership (A very, very long road for Bosnia), but there is little precedent to expect that they will be used wisely. During the accession processes in Romania and Bulgaria, the EU wielded great influence over government reform; post-accession, Brussels' leverage all but vanished. Doling out too many carrots too quickly will only encourage backsliding. The EU has the power to foment meaningful change now, but they have to resolve to use it.

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