War by other means: How Bosnia's clandestine political economies obstruct peace and state building

Problems of Post-Communism

Volumn 51, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 27-34

  Festić, Amra ^a   Rausche, Adrian ^b  

^a Office of the High Representative   (Bosnia and Herzegovina)

^b OHR Anti Fraud Department

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EID: 2642588321     PISSN: 10758216     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10758216.2004.11052170     Document Type: Review

References (15)

1. The General Framework for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina was confirmed in Dayton on November 21, 1995, and signed in Paris on December 14, 1995. The leaders of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Republic of Croatia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia were signatories, while the United States, Russia, Germany, Britain, France, and the European Union witnessed the agreement.
2. The Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), organized in the early 1990s by Radovan Karadžić and other radical Serbian nationalists, was dedicated to creating a greater Serbian state through brutal "ethnic cleansing" of Bosniaks and Croats.
3. The Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) was organized in the early 1990s in Croatia. Following its election to power in 1990, it pursued policies to assuring Croatian independence. The Bosnia-Herzegovina branch of HDZ was closely linked to its Croatian mother party and advocated ethnic separation with a view toward establishing ever closer relationships and ultimate unification with Croatia.
4. This analysis and information are derived from the authors' experience working for the Office of the High Representative's Anti-Fraud Department and its criminal investigations.
5. The international community in Bosnia-Herzegovina consisted of several agencies mandated by the UN through the Peace Implementation Council to implement the civilian and military components of the Dayton Agreement. The civilian effort was led by the Office of the High Representative. Military and security issues were covered by NATO's Implementation Force (IFOR), renamed the Stabilization Force (SFOR) in 1997.
6. Radovan Karadžić is wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in The Hague for war crimes but has managed to evade capture.
7. Biljana Plavšić pleaded guilty to crimes against humanity, and the IWCT sentenced her to eleven years in prison.
8. The "Law on the State Border Service of Bosnia-Herzegovina" was enacted in 2000. Until that time, local police officers guarded the state borders.
9. The Simplified Customs Procedure was performed by using the so-called CPD block system, a customs-duty form for commercial imports up to a specified value of goods.
10. The Washington Agreement brokered a peace settlement between the Bosniaks and Croats in March 1994. It established the Bosnia-Croat Federation on territories controlled by the Bosniak Army and the Croat Council of Defense (HVO) of the Croatian Army. The federation was subdivided into ten cantons. Its constitution held the Bosniaks and Croats as constitutive peoples, while Serbs were relegated to a grouping known as "Others."
11. Ante Jelavić was an HVO logistics commander during the war. In the post-war period, he became federation minister of defense and, following his appointment as head of the HDZ, was elected Croat president in the tripartite Bosnian presidency. Following his attempted third-entity policy in 2001, he was removed from office by the High Representative.
12. Herzegovina, in the southwestern part of Bosnia, is where the core of hardline HDZ nationalists are based. As a result, the Hercegovačka Banka and its subsidiaries were geographically located there, and this led to the functional description of the network as "Herzegovina Holding."
13. The Sabor was an assembly of Bosnian-Croat political leaders established in 2001 and called on by the HDZ to constitutionally found the third entity. Its membership was primarily from the HDZ and smaller ultra-nationalist parties, while the leadership was dominated by Jelavić.
14. Omer Ibrahimagić, "Essence of the Dayton: Dayton = Bosna in Europe Legal Essence of Dayton Agreement," Bosniak Intellectuals Forum (November 2001), available at 222.vkbi.ba.
15. Appointments of government agency directors and deputies are regulated by the recently adopted Law on Civil Service, which is intended to "professionalize" these posts.