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Bosnia-Herzegovina

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever, for initiating this short debate. I congratulate him particularly on his timing; politicians from most of the important parties in Bosnia are meeting, together with people from the international community, to attempt to thrash out a more suitable constitution 10 years after the Dayton Accord was first agreed. The noble Lord’s timing is impeccable, and I thought his speech was as well, as was that of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. They are both far more distinguished than me in this field. I put my name down to speak in this debate, thinking that I would offer a few comments arising from my visits to Bosnia and how the people I have spoken to there see things, and now find myself having to wind up the debate from these Benches—that is the way of the world in this House. I agree fundamentally with the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, that the European Union is the key to the whole of the Balkans, particularly to sorting out Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is not the most important thing; most important are the citizens of that country, who have to find ways of working with each other sensibly and democratically, running a modern democratic state and building a modern economy. People from the European Union can help and put appropriate pressure on them to do this. My visits to Bosnia have mainly been connected with meeting members of political parties and engaging in training sessions to try to get some of the non-sectarian parties—very small, weak parties—to understand how they might make electoral progress. I have to say that the results have been almost a complete failure. The only non-sectarian party which has really been able to survive in the environment of Bosnian politics is the Social Democratic Party, the SDP. It had the great advantage of being the successor to the old Communist Party so it inherited a lot of property, money and resources which enabled it to survive. The rest of the parties are floundering around in a murky maelstrom and find it very difficult to survive. The international community has at various times tried to support some of these parties, but has not been very successful. Initially, at the first elections, it thought it would be a good idea to encourage candidates, so it paid people to become candidates. Surprise, surprise—more than 100 political parties and lots of independents registered. They did not want to get elected; it was simply a way of getting some income after the collapse of the former Yugoslavian and Bosnian economy. That is an example of the law of unintended consequences. In order to survive, some non-sectarian parties found it necessary to make alliances with sectarian parties, particularly the SDA, the main Muslim party, the Bosniak nationalist Party of Democratic Action, which has formed a coalition for a united and democratic BiH, or the KCD, which has made some progress. In doing so, it has subsumed its own non-sectarian nature as part of what is still an overtly sectarian coalition, although less nationalist in its approach than some of the parties such as the SDS, the Republika Srpska and the HDZ, which was described to me, before I met some of its members, as the right-wing faction of Mr Tujman’s party from Croatia. Having met them, I know exactly what that means. I now know what old-fashioned eastern European bureaucrats are like. I had never met people like that before and it was quite an interesting experience. It was a combination of old-style party apparatchiks and Croatian nationalism. They gave us a half-hour lecture on Croatian history, how Croatia had been independent for about 10 years in the 11th or 12th century and how that justified everything they were doing. This was amusing, but the real problem is that such people are still very strong underground and can get most of the votes from the Croat community in Bosnia. It is not just a Serb problem. The fact that the war took place was clearly mainly at the instigation of Serb nationalists. However, the real problem in Bosnia is that when you talk to people individually they say they would love to transform to a modern European state, but most vote defensively for the party they see as representing their community. They think that if they do not vote for them and vote for social democrats, liberals, conservatives or republicans, they will lose out because the other lot will still vote for the nationalist lot. It reminded me very much of Northern Ireland, except that there are three ethnic religious groups rather than two. That leads to extra complications, quite apart from the structure of the two entities. The last time I went to Bosnia, three years ago, I was told by people across several small non-nationalist parties from both the Republika Srpska and the federation, ““This is our only opportunity to meet. We can’t function as a normal democratic political party because we have no income, effectively. The party has no resources and we can’t afford to come to Sarajevo and all meet together””. They found it very difficult. Some people from a northern town in the Republika Srpska explained how politics worked in their town. The privatisation which had taken place after the war resulted in some of the local state enterprises being sold off to people who were prominent members of the SDS, the Serbian Democratic Party. They owned the enterprises and, in turn, funded the political party. The privatised industry which had been sold to the old bureaucrats—the old apparatchiks—was now funding the political party it was supporting. It was a dual relationship. When I asked whether they could campaign against these people, they said, ““The problem is that they run everything; they deliver everything through these firms so they give the contracts back to the firms that support them and pay for them and they determine who gets what. So if you want to put central heating in an old people’s block of flats or employ wardens, you vote for that party. If you don’t, they will spend the money on people who do vote for them””. That is an example of old-fashioned machine politics and very difficult to counter. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Ashdown and the fantastic work he has done in Bosnia. He has taken the country forward as far as it was possible to take it forward. But he and everybody else now recognises that we are no longer in a position whereby an old-fashioned colonial government—what a commentator in the Guardian this week called ““benevolent liberal imperialism””—is possible. The country has to move on, and power has to be transferred to local politicians and local people. In that respect, would the Minister like to comment on the discussions that have taken place between the international community, the Americans and others, and political leaders from Bosnia? We are told that secret discussions have taken place for six or seven months; I wonder what role we are playing in that. Does the Minister think there may be some favourable outcomes in doing away with the entities, the cantons and the federation, and moving towards a much more unitary state? It may seem strange for a liberal to say that but, in a country of 4 million people in those circumstances, it is absolutely necessary. Does he believe that we may be able, with the help of people in Bosnia, to move forward to a new era politically, as well as everything else—because if we do not do it politically, the place will not survive?