Money can’t buy love for Mostar

Date: 01/08/1996

IN July 1994, the EU established an 'administration' in Mostar (EUAM), dubbed by some as the “politically correct protectorate” because of the middle ground it attempted to tread between bank-roller and city government of the divided Bosnian town.

Deployed on the heels of the Washington-brokered peace agreement between Muslims and Croats, the administration had a double-pronged mandate: to reconstruct and reunify what had once been Bosnia's most ethnically-mixed, but what was then its most ethnically-polarised, town.

Hans Koschnik, the former mayor of Bremen in Germany, was given the title of 'administrator' and functions which floated somewhere between those of a mayor and those of a mere adviser.

Koschnik and the EUAM were often criticised - and sometimes manipulated - as a result of their in-between role.

The nationalistic Croat forces who hoped to maintain the division of Mostar demanded complete control and complained that the EUAM “imperialists” had no right to tell them how to run their town. Those Bosnians who hoped to reunite the city expected the EUAM to exercise its 'binding powers' forcefully and not to tolerate any interference from the local authorities.

The EU memorandum of understanding created eight departments (public order, education and culture, reconstruction, etc.), which were headed by experts from the EU and comprised two local co-directors, one Croat and one Bosnian, with whom all measures were discussed. The EU administrator worked closely with the mayors of Muslim-held east Mostar and Croat-controlled west Mostar, as well as with alternating representatives of the remaining Serb minority.

On a monthly basis, Koschnik and his successor Perez Cassado also consulted an advisory council consisting of five Bosnians, five Croats and five 'others' (three Serbs, one Jew, one offspring of a mixed marriage).

On the security front, the Western European Union (WEU) dispatched a multinational police force of some 190 officers who patrolled the city without executive powers and who ultimately helped create Mostar's joint Bosnian-Croat police force.

The EUAM's reconstruction mandate was clear cut. Just as non-governmental and intergovernmental organisations do in dozens of countries around the world, the EUAM attempted to repair a war-torn city's shattered infrastructure.

Unlike many of the financially-strapped operations elsewhere, however, the EUAM swooped into Mostar with what often seemed like bottomless pockets. It spent more than 157 million ecu restoring water, power and telephone lines, repairing five of the town's 12 destroyed bridges, building kindergartens and health centres, and helping foster a local economy by investing in and providing grants to companies and small businesses.

Unfortunately for the EUAM and for the ordinary people of Mostar, money could not buy love, and the reunification component of its mandate faltered. When the EUAM arrived, more than a third of the ethnically-mixed town (once 34&percent; Croat, 35&percent; Muslim and 19&percent; Serb) had either been forced to flee or expelled amid brutal ethnic cleansing, contact and movement between Muslim-held east Mostar and Croat-controlled west had ceased, and the only bodies cooperating from the two sides were the gangs.

For the first 18 months of the mission, the picture was clouded by Croat politicians and gang leaders determined to preserve their nationalistic and lucrative Croat para-state and to obstruct EU bridge-building at every turn. During this period, the EUAM attempted to act as a mollifier and lubricator - making rivals who could not bear to sit in the same room together sit down at the same table together.

Although Koschnik rarely exercised his authority to issue decrees without both sides' consent, even subtle efforts to promote reconciliation were not welcomed.

On two occasions, hardline Croats in west Mostar tried to assassinate him. In the second instance, a mob attack was organised after he had attempted to arbitrate a boundary dispute, the Croat police stood by and watched.

It was only in February that the EU presence finally began to pay dividends on the political front.

Confronted by the momentum of the Dayton Agreement, pressured by Europe and frightened by a spate of New Year's killings, the local Croats finally moved. For months, the authorities had granted only a limited number of transit permits to women and the elderly, and police officers from the two sides had eyed one another only through their rifle sights. Suddenly, almost overnight, freedom of movement for all citizens and a joint police force were established.

At the close of the EUAM's two-year mandate, as it prepares to trim its staff and functions for a six-month extension, Mostar no longer resembles Berlin with an invisible wall. Muslim citizens are free to enter west Mostar at their own risk; Muslim and Croat leaders meet several times a week to discuss municipal issues; and Western European Union policemen chaperone joint Muslim-Croat police patrols which, if nothing else, ensure that 119 Muslim officers sit in a van every day and smoke cigarettes with 73 fellow Croat officers.

But unification remains a distant dream: the 'free' movement is self-censured, refugee returns are non-existent, evictions of Muslims from west Mostar are continuing and the patrols are purely symbolic.

The local elections on 30 June, Bosnia's first for more than five years, provide a vivid illustration of the EUAM's mixed success.

Although the elections were carried out in order to create joint institutions and promote reconciliation, they opened old wounds and may even have created new ones.

On the day itself, more than 58,000 Bosnians took part, and dozens of buses travelled freely between Muslim-occupied east Mostar and Croat-controlled west without incident.

Displaced Mostarians visited flats they thought they would never see again and exchanged hugs and freely drank coffee with former friends they had sworn they would never speak to again.

For the first time since May 1993, when Croat nationalists roused Muslims from their beds and commenced the cleansing of west Mostar, the town's tattered halves became one.

The results of the vote were both predictable and preordained - predictable because savage fighting, a frigid peace and nationalistic leaders had ensured that Mostarians would vote along national lines; preordained because the parties had agreed in advance to distribute municipal positions according to national quotas.

But whether the parties would accept the results and allow the joint institutions to function was an open question.

In theory, the elections created one multi-ethnic city council and six municipal councils. The electoral quota system, which attempted to reflect the pre-war ethnic confusion of Mostar, was meant to establish a city council of 16 Bosnians, 16 Croats and five “others”; three Croat majority municipalities in which a coalition of Bosnians and 'others' would be of sufficient number to outvote the Croat representatives; and three Bosnian majority municipalities in which a coalition of Croats and 'others' could outvote the Bosnian representatives.

What this meant, in Balkan parlance, was trouble. Hardline Croats participated in order to gain the stamp of democratic legitimacy, but they never gave any indication that they viewed the election as a step on the road to reunification.

Although NATO's peace-keeping forces and IPTF did a superb job guaranteeing security on the day of the election, it was clear there would be no one around to ensure that the Muslims expelled in 1993 from their homes in west Mostar would be able to attend meetings in their old neighbourhoods safely. Moreover, until widespread repatriation began, these elected officials would represent phantom constituents.

So far, in fact, the Croats have refused even to recognise the results of the election. Citing the presence of 26 extra ballots in one polling station, they have demanded a re-vote, refusing to accept the decision of the Greek EU ombudsman who decided that, despite the technical irregularity, the results should stand.

The EUAM officials made many mistakes in Mostar: they gave away their reconstruction money without linking it to reunification, and they believed in 'fair play' in a town in which there were no rules.

But they were also severely hampered by the west's unwillingness to exert constant pressure in the only place that mattered: on Croatian leaders in Zagreb who pulled the strings in Mostar.

The Mostar experiment provides many lessons. It illustrates the limits of financial solutions to political problems, the importance of constant outside pressure from western capitals, the need for outside authorities to hit the ground running and, perhaps above all, the perils of political correctness in the Balkans.

“We were too conciliatory from the start,” says EUAM departing political adviser Klaus Metscher. “The people here sniffed weakness and we could never quite recover our authority.”

Nicholas Hinton is the chief executive of the International Crisis Group, a newly-formed, private, multinational organisation created to reinforce the capacity and resolve of the international community to head off crises before they develop into full-blown disasters.