Finally a book about the last years of Communist rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Instead of this crucial period in understanding the descent to war in the
country, all too many studies have focused on 'ancient' or at least much earlier
episodes of Bosnian history. This book finally fills an important gap. Both in
English and in Bosnian only few books have covered this period [1]. By covering
the years prior to the first elections in 1990 and its immediate aftermath, the
book seeks to explore the reasons for both the electoral success of the
nationalist parties and descent to war.
...
Notes:
[1] Steven L. Burg; Paul S. Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic
Conflict and International Intervention (M.E. Sharpe: 1999)[see Balkan Academic
News Book Reviews 13/2000]; Suad Arnautovic, Izbori u Bosni i Hercegovini '90:
analiza izbornog procesa (Sarajevo: Promocult 1996).
Richard Sobel & Eric Shiraev (eds.),
International Public Opinion and the Bosnian Crisis. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington
Books, 2003. 344 pp. 25.95 USD, ISBN 0-7391-0479-9 (softcover).
Reviewed by Nidzara Ahmetasevic (journalist, Sarajevo) Email:
nidzara_ah@yahoo.com
"C.Wiebes" <wiebes@pscw.uva.nl> wrote:
It is my pleasure to inform you that my book dealing with the Intelligence and
the War in Bosnia 1992 - 1995 has been recently published. It includes chapters
on sharing of intelligence with the UN, plus US, British, Canadian and European
Intelligence operations in Bosnia and Croatia, Human Intelligence, Imint, Sigint
(2 chapters including NSA operations) and Covert Operations. It is based on top
secret Dutch intel. archives plus (de)classified US, UK, Canadian, Bosnian and
UN documents.
You can find details about my book here.
http://www.lit-verlag.de/isbn/3-8258-6347-6 or look at:
http://www.transactionpub.com/cgi-bin/transactionpublishers.storefront
Best regards
Dr. Cees Wiebes
The role of the intelligence and security services
Dr. Cees Wiebes
Lit Verlag, Berlin/London
This is a background report serving as an appendix to the report Srebrenica, a safearea,
produced by the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD).
"The Balkans: Searching for
Solutions" Stein Rokkan Centre for Social Studies
Bergen University Research Foundation
Bergen, March 2003
The Balkans can only move towards enduring peace, political stability and
economic prosperity if the former multi-cultural society of Bosnia is restored.
restoration must be made through the return of refugees, political
re-integration of territories divided by nationalisms as well as the Dayton
accord, and through the development of a self-sustainable economy. These
assessments were made at the international conference on ´The Balkans: Searching
for Solutions´, held in Bergen in May 2002. The conference was organized around
the topics of security challenges and prospects for post-war restoration and
sustainability on the Balkans, and the book includes twelve papers presented by
participants from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Norway and Sweden: Řrjar
Řyen, Ivan Siber, Radovan Vukadinovic, Dzemal Sokolovic, Daniel Lindvall,
Dragomir Pantic, Sacir Filandra, Dusan Janjic, BorisTihi, Marija Kolin, Jovanka
Matic, and Suada Buljubasic.
The conference was organized as part of the Project ´The Politics of Democratic
and Welfare Development in South Eastern Europe: a Network for Research and
Education´ at the Rokkan Centre, and financially supported by the Program for
South Eastern Europe, administered by the Centre for International University
Cooperation and the Norwegian Research Council.
The book can be ordered at:
post@rokkan.uib.no;
price: NOK 150
BHRegister.com is proud to present the "Sarajevo
Guidebook", authored by Zijad Jusufovic, the recently renowned operator
of "Mission Impossible" tours of Sarajevo. As recently seen on CNN and CBS, the
"Mission Impossible" tours those sites in Sarajevo made (in)famous during the
1992-1996 period. The "Sarajevo" Guidebook" is an easy to read reference
guidebook that will help any person learn about the city of Sarajevo. Available
in English and German (with French version coming soon) at a low cost of $ 15.00
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La Bosnie-Herzégovine
: enjeux de la transition Paris, L'Harmattan, 2003, 160 pp, [ ISBN : 2-7475-3928-8 ] edited by
Christophe Solioz & Svebor André
Dizdarevic, presents contributions - translated into french - from Srdjan
Dizdarevic, Zarko Papic, Gajo Sekulic and Dragoljub Stojanov on the multifaceted
transition process in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
If interested, you may order this book - available from February 10 - at the
following address :
http://www.editions-harmattan.fr.
This book is the follow-up of Ownership Process in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Sarajevo, 2001, which will, by the way, be soon available in a new version,
including and exclusive interview with the former High Representative,
Ambassador Wolfgang Petritsch.
Together with Bosna i Hercegovina : od ovisnosti do samoodrzivosti. Lekcije i
izazovi procesa tranzicije i demokratizacije u Bosni i Hercegovini. Proces
ownership-a: bosanskohercegovacki pogledi i prijedlozi [Bosnia and Herzegovina:
From Dependency to Autonomy], Sarajevo 2002, these publications are part of a
modest project focusing on the ownership process intended as the appropriation
of the transition and democratization process (project homepage :
http://www.christophesolioz.ch/projets/ownership/welcome.html).
Bosna-Hersek Baris Sureci (Peace Process in Bosnia-Hercegovina) Author: Osman Karatay
Publisher: KaraM (www.karamyayincilik.com)
Place/Date: Ankara, November 2002.
Language: Turkish
ISBN: 975-6467-02-9
19,5 x 13,5 cm, 184 pages
The book basicly contains the developments between 1995 and 1998, but actualized
in necessary points. It may be classified as a 'scientific research diary',
since the author lived in Bosnia within the same period, and witnessed almost
all developments from the very hot summer of 1995 to the days in 1998, when
everything got virtually monotone. The first part is about the pre-Dayton days,
focusing on Fall 1995 quarrels and political developments. The second part is
about the 21 days in Dayton or how the Dayton agreement was signed. After this,
every part was dedicated to a certain aspect of the peace process: General
political developments, military affairs, developments in Republika Srbska, the
Federation process, war criminals issue, return of refugees, reconstruction and
economical developments. The last part is an overview of the Dayton process in
regional, European and global terms. At the end, Turkish translation of the
Dayton Agreement is given as a supplement.
Sumantra Bose. Bosnia after Dayton: Nationalist Partition and International
Intervention London: Hurst and Company, 2002. viii + 296 pp. Tables, maps, notes,
bibliography, index. Ł40.00 (cloth), ISBN 1-85065-645-2; Ł15.95 (paper), ISBN
1-85065-585-5.
Reviewed by Stefan Wolff, Department of European Studies, University of Bath,
England.
Published by H-Diplo (September, 2002)
The Merits and Flaws of "International Statebuilding" in Bosnia
Seven years after the conclusion of the Dayton accords, which brought the war in
Bosnia to an end, Sumantra Bose has delivered this fine account analysing not
just the process of implementing the accords but also examining the wider
lessons that can be learned from the Bosnian experience for international
intervention and the dynamics of externally driven state and nation-building.
Broadly supportive of the intentions and outcome of the international
community's role in Bosnia and fairly optimistic of the long-term success of the
Bosnian experiment, this volume is bound to be received with praise by some and
criticism by others. This is especially true at a time when the international
community is engaged in another Bosnia-type exercise in Afghanistan and some are
pushing it towards action against Iraq where, on the "day after", similar
challenges of rebuilding a state will await external actors.
To be sure, Bose's book is not about whether any such intervention is desirable,
it is primarily an assessment about whether it is politically feasible, that is,
whether international intervention can create a meaningful and workable
institutional framework for the reconstruction of an ethnically plural society
torn apart by civil war and the gross human rights violations that accompanied
it. Focusing on the political dimensions of the reconstruction project keeps the
author's task manageable. While some might argue that it leaves out important
elements of any post-war reconstruction endeavor, (such as rebuilding civil
society and economic recovery) that are vital for long-term success, I agree
with the general premise of Bose's work that without negotiating, implementing
and operating the "right" institutional framework, everything else becomes
meaningless.
Thus, one can read this book also as a quest for an adequate framework, or, more
precisely, whether the external imposition of a consociational institutional
structure and its stabilisation (or the effective containment of opposition to
it) by a massive international military and administrative presence is the right
approach to rebuilding a war-torn society. After contextualising present-day
Bosnia in its historical and contemporary time and place, Bose examines in great
detail how the Dayton state of Bosnia came about and how it is structured. This
is informative reading, supplying the basic facts to those who are not familiar
with recent Balkan and international diplomatic history. What follows is a meso-level
analysis of the international intervention process since Dayton, taking the town
of Mostar as an example. While this is an interesting and informative analysis,
I do not quite agree with Bose's contention that "Mostar refracts in a
concentrated microcosm practically all the problems Bosnia & Herzegovina faces
in the aftermath of the apocalypse of 1992-5" (p.146). With hardly any Serbs
left in a town that once held approximately 20,000, the Mostar situation may be
much more indicative of the problems in the Croat-Muslim federation, and their
likely or unlikely solution. Admittedly, the future of Bosnia as a single state
hinges, to a significant degree, on the stability of the federation, yet the
"Serbian factor" can hardly be underestimated. Thus, while Mostar is an
interesting case study of the institution-building and "unification" dilemmas
faced by international actors in post-Dayton Bosnia, it is only part of the
wider Bosnian picture.
This wider picture is what Bose turns to in the following two chapters. First he
places the Bosnia debate in the context of the dispute between partitionists and
integrationists that has been raging between both scholars and practitioners for
the past decade in relation to (post-) Yugoslavia. Engaging with advocates of
partition like Pape, Mearsheimer, Kaufman and van Evera, he argues against
partition (which, unfortunately, is never clearly defined), primarily on the
basis on its human, economic and cultural costs. This argument is clear,
balanced and straightforward, and benefits from a solid comparison with the
situation in Kashmir.
In chapter 5, Bose examines the dynamics of democracy in the divided society of
post-Dayton Bosnia and its "range of institutional technologies for managing
divided societies democratically, in particular an array of devices associated
with federalism and consociation" (p. 205). I found his analysis of the Bosnian
party system and the different techniques of electoral engineering particularly
enlightening as they are relevant to many other divided societies and serve as a
warning to those who believe that creative electioneering can solve all the
problems of such societies. Following a subsequent analysis of Bosnia's federal/confederal
institutions, Bose concludes that despite its limits and problems,
consociationalism still is the "most viable institutional option" for Bosnia
"short of formal partition, redrawing of boundaries and exchange of populations"
(p. 247).
The final chapter, in which Bose draws "lessons from (and for) international
intervention", I found the most problematic. First, Bose reverts to Rogers
Brubaker's triadic nexus for the explanation of post-war Bosnia (p. 260ff.).
This is a significant step back from the analysis up to this point: Brubaker
considers host-state, kin- state and minority as the three essential players and
has very little to say about international actors. While Bose (quoting Mihailo
Crnobrnja) acknowledges that the international community is the "fourth
constituent part" of Bosnia (p. 267), he nevertheless remains trapped within
Brubaker's framework when claiming "that Bosnia, including the controversies
over the legitimacy and the institutional form of its statehood, is best
understood through two levels of analysis: the local level within Bosnia, and
the supra-state, regional level which includes but also transcends Bosnia" (p.
277f., emphasis in original). Clearly the earlier analysis should have suggested
adding a third level: the international community in which another set of
distinct players is active, again with particular interest and opportunity
structures that influence, and are influenced by, what happens at the local and
regional level. Not acknowledging this risks not drawing all the lessons from
the Bosnian experience: it was no accident that a consociational model was
adopted in Bosnia as this reflected best the interests and convictions of the
main players in the international community.
Citation: Stefan Wolff . "Review of Sumantra Bose, Bosnia after Dayton:
Nationalist Partition and International Intervention," H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews,
September, 2002. URL:
http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/ showrev.cgi?path=106301035219044.
