Smashed glass littered the marble floors; instructions and arrows were painted on the walls; furniture was upended and broken. Desktop computers and boxes of files were abandoned on the stairs. The basement was strewn with German banknotes, Bosnian convertible marks, sacks of coins and the ashes of currency and papers destroyed by the break-in. Western officials could only shake their heads in regret. “It was not possible to do this with finesse,” says Ralph Johnson, who witnessed the raid as the international community’s top U.S. civilian in Bosnia.
But finesse has never been needed more desperately. Mostar became a byword for ethnic violence eight years ago, during the civil war, after Croat artillery destroyed the 16th-century stone bridge leading to the city’s Muslim quarter and then reduced its buildings to rubble. Last week’s bank raid, one of the biggest military operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the war’s end in 1995, was supposed to help prevent a new ethnic collapse. International officials believe that militant Croat secessionists were using the bank to launder money for their cause, a charge vehemently denied by bank officials.
Now the fear is that NATO’s intervention could drive many moderate Croats to support the nationalists. The deepening mess has raised questions not only about the tactics of the NATO-led international “stabilization force” (better known by its acronym, SFOR) but about the alliance’s basic strategy–or lack of one–in a land that to all intents remains a Western protectorate.
The raid’s primary targets were a senior Bosnian politician named Ante Jelavic and his deputies. Although he denies any wrongdoing, Western officials predict that seized documents from the bank will lead to charges against him and his renegade political party, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). Jelavic’s dream is to carve out a separate Bosnian Croat state, with Mostar as its capital. Until a few weeks ago he was one member of Bosnia’s three-person presidency. The unwieldy office was created under the 1994 Dayton peace accords in the hope of placating all three of the country’s main ethnic groups: Serbs, Muslims and Croats.
Instead the deal helped nurture three nationalist parties. They dominated in national elections until late last year, when Western officials decided to strengthen the political center. The nationalist parties had little choice but to cooperate; the Dayton pact gives extraordinary powers to SFOR’s civilian equivalent, the Office of the High Representative, led by Austrian diplomat Wolfgang Petritsch. But the Croats balked. Last October the foreigners changed the federation’s election rules by edict without consulting Jelavic or his party. The effect was to break the HDZ’s grip on the legislature’s upper house. Furious, Jelavic announced that members of his party would form their own legislature and establish an independent Croat enclave in Herzegovina.
The standoff continued until early March, when the high representative decided to get tough. He fired Jelavic from the presidency, ordered him and his colleagues out of politics and banned all diplomatic contact with them. Croat nationalists called on their ethnic kinsmen to quit the federation Army and all government posts.
Croat soldiers around the country proceeded to rip the federation insignia from their uniforms. But many of the declared renegades remained at their posts. That was no comfort to the federation’s Defense minister, a centrist Croat named Mijo Anic, who worried that pro-Jelavic troops might seize heavy weapons to launch an armed revolt. Anic asked SFOR to help him expel the breakaway forces from military bases and weapons depots.
Anic’s appeal got a decidedly mixed response. NATO didn’t bother wasting time checking federation shoulder patches. Instead SFOR commander Lt. Gen. Michael Dodson ordered all units to retrieve munitions from Bosnian Croat storage sites and consolidate them under SFOR control. The Americans worked five days and nights straight to round up all heavy weapons in the U.S.-run northeastern sector. To help Croat soldiers stay loyal to the federation, an American helicopter airlifted in a pillowcase full of cash, roughly $750,000, to cover back pay and forthcoming salaries.
Not everyone took the threat so seriously. In the French-controlled zone near Mostar, Spanish troops posted a lackadaisical guard carrying no weapons at one consolidated arms depot in the town of Caplina. Croats appeared to be completely in charge–despite the absence of federation patches from their uniforms. “We make sure that the weapons are completely and professionally guarded,” the French sector’s commander, Maj. Gen. Robert Meille, told reporters last week. Meille seemed unconcerned about the renegades. “They are rebels,” he said. “But this is the problem of the government. It is not my problem.”
The almost farcical disarray is typical of Bosnia’s peacekeeping forces. SFOR’s complex chain of command leaves national contingents essentially free to decide how and when to act–as they did after Anic’s call for help. “There is no rule of law in this country other than SFOR,” says a Western diplomat in Mostar. “But SFOR sits around on their duffs. When they go after the indicted war criminals, there will be rule of law.”
Now many people in Mostar are blaming the international contingent for adding to the anarchy. Stipe Bakula, 65, is a retired factory technician. He wants to know how he’s supposed to collect his pension, which is administered by the Hercegovacka Banka–now closed, thanks to SFOR and the high representative. “Petritsch acts like a dictator,” says Bakula. “He twists the laws to fit how he wants them to.” Many Croat military men agree. “The commander of SFOR says everything will be better,” says Gen. Nedjeljko Obradovic, currently defense coordinator for Jelavic’s self-rule legislature. “But then they take our banks, our money. This is wrong. They talk to us as if we are retarded.”
Some moderate Croats have given up hope. “I have no feelings of patriotism or love for my country anymore,” says a language student named Snezhana. “There is no opportunity to live a normal life. As soon as I finish school I will leave.”
The Croats’ resentment erupted on April 6, when international examiners first paid an unannounced call on the Hercegovacka Banka. SFOR troops accompanied the auditors. Croat mobs, apparently whipped up by the HDZ, attacked with rocks and eggs, halted the audit and injured 21 soldiers and several auditors.
When the peacekeepers went back they were determined to avoid another humiliating rout. Last week’s British-led raid, using troops from eight countries, was a rare demonstration of unity in SFOR. Several diplomatic observers concede that few Western judges would have approved a search warrant based on the evidence available–if due process has any relevance in this case. Officially the purpose was to trace funds whose alleged diversion had been studiously ignored for months or years. In other versions the aim was to gather criminal evidence against Jelavic and his cronies. Or to assemble the records needed to enable an American provisional administrator to take charge of the bank. Privately, however, Western diplomats acknowledge that it was a search-and-destroy mission. The Hercegovacka Banka may never reopen.
There is wide agreement that the West needs to rethink its mission in Bosnia. In theory Petritsch has vast powers, but in practice he faces enormous institutional obstacles. The Dayton agreement created a clumsy, confusing political structure, designed less around the rights of individuals than around those of ethnic groups. Most international experts agree it should be rewritten–but no one is taking the lead. Sooner or later, the Bush administration may take up the challenge. Jacques Klein, the plainspoken retired U.S. general who heads the U.N. mission in Bosnia, says it may be the only way to withdraw American troops from Bosnia. “If you want to get out,” he says, “you first have to get in.” That prospect just keeps getting grimmer.
