Professor testifies at Congressional hearing on Bosnia-Herzegovina
One million returns, yet the legacy of ethnic cleansing endures. That was the testimony of Gerard Toal, professor of government and international affairs in the School of Public and International Affairs, Virginia Tech, National Capital Region, before a congressional subcommittee hearing on “Bosnia-Herzegovina: Unfinished Business” on April 6.
Ten years after the Dayton Peace Accords ended the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Toal argued that the peace agreements' weaknesses account for the relative lack of progress. “The peace agreement,” he said, “rewarded ethnic cleansing by dividing Bosnia into ethnoterritorial entities which were given state-like administrative powers. In recognizing Republika Srpska, it legitimated a wartime political entity with state aspirations that was cleared of non-Serbs by murder, forced displacement, and acts of genocide.”
During the hour-long hearing, Toal, who has been researching Bosnia-Herzegovina for nearly a decade, shared findings from his studies with members of the Europe Subcommittee of the International Relations Committee. The subcommittee, chaired by Elton Gallegly of California, includes Congresswoman Jo Ann Davis of Virginia.
Toal’s testimony underlined how the Dayton Peace Accords saddled Bosnia-Herzegovina with an unwieldy bureaucratic structure of governance. “Bosnia-Herzegovina became a weak central state with two strong entities, 10 cantons and a special district under military occupation and international supervision. n. It had 13 different constitutions, prime ministers, assemblies, and law making institutions. In sum, the Dayton Peace Accords created what some have termed an ‘ungovernable country,’ a cumbersome excess of administrative offices for political party capture and patronage.” According to Toal, “Dayton ended the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina but did not resolve the conflict. It was the product of a particular geopolitical conjuncture. It marked a significant compromise of the principle of modern civic democratic politics within a unified polity. This has hindered the development of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a modern effective and coherent state since then.”
Nevertheless, there has been some remarkable success in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the years following the peace agreement, particularly pertaining to the level of displaced person and refugee returns, Toal said. During his testimony, he cited the following:
=>With a pre-war population of 4.4 million, more than 1 million people were made refugees by the Bosnian war and another million internally displaced within the country. Additional displacement of more than 60,000 people occurred after the transfer of territories between the two entities.
=>As of Jan 31, there were 1,005,958 returns; 441,000 are refugees who have returned from abroad while 565,028 returnees were internally displaced people.
=>The geopolitically significant figure is the number of minority returns: 448,880. These are people who have returned to their homes in an entity where they are now a minority.
“The return of over one million people to their pre-war homes is a remarkable achievement,” Toal said. That success is attributed to five central factors: security and strategy, international cooperation and coordination, localized capacity, the imposition of standardized national laws, and developing local ownership of process. But, he said, there are a number of limits to the returns process: inevitable urbanization, ethnic engineering, the funding gap and local ownership questions, education and pensions and economic sustainability.
Looking to the future, Toal said the grand strategy of the international community is to fully incorporate and embed Bosnia into modern Euro-Atlantic geopolitical space. In the words of European Union High Representative (Foreign Minister designate), Javier Solana, the goal is to move from "the era of Dayton," the Bosnia created by the Dayton Peace Accords, to "the era of Brussels," the Bosnia that needs to be created for it to become a member of NATO and the European Union.
“Bosnia has the possibility of a future in the European Union…But this will require that the country face the fact that it needs a significantly revised constitutional structure. “I would like to suggest,” Toal said, “that one path towards change is through a statewide referendum on a new constitutional convention. Voters in all of Bosnia could be asked if they approve of the establishment of a constitutional convention under European Union supervision to draft a new constitution to make Bosnia-Herzegovina an European Union-ready state (with decentralized ministries)…The referendum could prove divisive, but, if promoted as a choice between the stagnant past and a prosperous future, it could draw significant multiethnic support and create an opportunity for Bosnia to transcend the dysfunctionality of its Dayton-era constitutional structures.”
Virginia Tech has fostered a growing partnership with the greater metropolitan Washington D.C. community since 1969. Today, the university’s presence in the National Capital Region includes graduate programs and research centers in Alexandria, Falls Church, Leesburg, Manassas, and Middleburg. In addition to supporting the university’s teaching and research mission, Virginia Tech’s National Capital Region has established collaborations with local and federal agencies, businesses, and other institutions of higher education.
