Dr. Danko Plevnik: Repercussions of the
new war on terrorism for Bosnia and Herzegovina and its integration
in the EU
In the 1950's America, the notion "communist" did not apply
only to the members of the Communist Party, who considered themselves
communists, but also to those who worked on the hydrogen bomb. At
one point in 1953, even the creator of American atomic bomb, Robert
Oppenheimer, came under the security removal treatment. Today, "communists"
are replaced with "terrorists," and every Arab who is applying
for U.S. visa is asked whether he knows how to make a bomb. Just an
ordinary bomb, for now, not an atomic bomb.
As in any other war, the first casualty of the war on terror is the
truth. What should we talk about when we talk about terrorism? If
we are talking about geopolitical terrorism, which is the terror that
aims at introducing heterarchy (the rule of foreigners) in a country,
which influences a shift in the power balance in a region or disturbs
world order, then this term could apply only to the Taleban regime
in Afghanistan while under direct influence of al-Qaida.
However, after the war in Afghanistan, we can no longer talk about
geopolitical terrorism, unless its definition is consistently applied
on war in Iraq or the influence of al-Qaida on changes in the U.S.
security system. After the Berlin wall came down in 1989, and communism
and USSR fell in 1991, American strategic community thought that the
peace dividend would grow and the United States should use the opportunity
to catch what Charles Krauthammer called the "unipolar momentum"
and enter the unipolar era. However, a unipolar world is meaningless
both in physics and in geography.
That same community claimed after 9/11 that the war on terrorism would
continue for the next 30 to 50 years, that it would be global and
that the reaction to it should not be unipolar. Who will be in charge
of anti-terrorist wars? Counter-terrorism agencies that have demonstrated
close links between intelligence agencies and terrorists. If, for
example, 80% of espionage funds goes to the Pentagon, a new era of
terrorist elements and intelligence blowback should be expected that
would feed the spiral of international terrorism. Allowing secret
intelligence and military actions contrary to the international law
will lead to new wars between terrorists and secret services. As written
in U.S. Congress report, "while such covert initiatives will
be endorsed by few countries, they will be understood and tolerated
by most."(1).
The fact that there were 14.2 million activities in 2003 that classified
official documents as strictly confidential -- twice as much as in
the past ten years -- leads to the conclusion that such tendency would
continue. (2).
If a threatened world is on the one side, who is on the other? Al-Qaida.
How did al-Qaida become so prominent on the global scene? The book
Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense
Policy, edited in 2000 by leading conservative strategic intellectuals,
Robert Kagan and William Kristol, does not have a single word devoted
to al-Qaida. Only in chapter by Reuel Marco Gerecht, a former CIA
specialist in Directorate for Operations, could one learn that the
Central Intelligence Agency's "favorite, Usama bin Laden, became,
especially after the embassy bombings in Africa, a more palatable
and probable suspect"(3).
Where does the exaggeration of the terrorist threat lead? According
to Gore Vidal in "National Security State"(4), monopolizing
security despite such ethical claims becomes the foundation of modern
policy to which democracy, human rights and international law must
be subordinate. If the United States had limited its control of others'
sovereignty through NATO, then it is spreading it throughout the world
via the right to fight terrorism as a new geopolitical lever. Is terrorism
really a threat to survival?
One should listen to the reasoning of experienced geopolitician Zbigniew
Brzezinski, who thinks that the threat to international security and
central strategic war remains nuclear deterrence of Russia, not the
fight against terrorism, which is overblown. He thinks that "the
public perception of the terrorist group al-Qaeda as a highly organized,
tightly disciplined, globally pervasive underground army of technologically
skilled terrorists directed from an efficient command and control
center" is overestimated. He does not see sources of insecurity
in the real Balkans, but rather in the "new Balkans" located
within the southeastern rim of middle Eurasia. The main interest of
the EU, in his opinion, is "global stability"(5).
Bosnia and Herzegovina have no weapons ABC. There is no critical mass
of events for something like Bosnian terrorism, which is different
than the situation with Basque, Irish, Corsican, Breton or Kurdish
terrorism. Terrorism is not a novelty in Europe. United Kingdom has
had attacks from Irish bombers since 1870's. Spain has been struck
by Basque terrorists since 1960's, with the death toll of more than
700. Italy has had ethnically clean terrorism, and 415 died as victims
of terrorism between 1969 and 1986 (6). Germany has faced leftist
terrorism for years and recently rightist terror as well. Political
terrorism did not avoid Netherlands and Sweden either.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, terrorism was introduced according to a
classical recipe of state terror: Serbian secret services conducted
terrorist operations in eastern Bosnia in order to turn terrorism
into war eventually. A few hundred to a few thousand volunteers from
foreign countries, mostly Muslims, joined legitimate defense of Bosnia
during the war. However, they were soon detected by the international
community as religious fanatics and a terrorist threat. After 9/11,
SFOR paid more attention to their "recognition" as terrorists
and apprehension of humanitarian workers from Muslim countries than
to their official and declared duty--apprehension of indicted war
criminals Ratko Mladić and Radovan Karadžić.
Of the six Algerians who were surrendered to the U.S. by the Bosnian
authorities in the beginning of 2002 for suspected links with Al-Qa'ida
and sent to the Guantanamo Bay, four had Bosnian citizenship: Muhamed
Nesle, Mustafa Ait Idr, Budela Hadz and Bumedian Ladgar, as well as
Tarik Mahmudu Ahmedu el-Savahu, who was imprisoned in Afghanistan.
After the war, no major terrorist act was conducted either in BiH
or through BiH. It was like in any European country or a country in
the region; there has been political and mob terrorism, but no "anti-civilizational"
or geopolitical terrorism.
Instead of becoming "small Afghanistan," from which terrorist
actions would be undertaken all around the Western world and whose
white-skinned citizens would become part of the "white al-Qaida",
causing less suspicions with anti-terror agents, as planned and desired
in some intelligence circles, Bosnia became a country sending units
to Iraq and a potential enemy of al-Qaida.
The main threat to Bosnia, however, does not come from abroad, but
rather from within, from its own policy and not from global terrorism.
Political insecurity of BiH originates with the structure of its political
system, not with its terrorist potential. Obsessing about destabilization
with the help of terrorism is therefore quite out of place and tendentious
with regard to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Consequently, there is no need
to believe that EUROFOR would be more efficient than SFOR, because
members of the European force who missed to catch war criminals within
the NATO force will probably continue to do the same within the EU
force.
Terrorism is still American political issue and it will not be the
main question that will be asked of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the
next two years when the Stabilization and Association Agreement should
be concluded with the EU. The issue of stability, although formally
an interest to the EU, will not be as important to the EU as to the
U.S. Only the U.S. defined its continued military presence in Bosnia
and Herzegovina as the mission to catch terrorists and fight against
terrorism, which is logical considering the current American grand
strategy.
Richard Perle thought that "stability" was the main argument
for American military intervention in Bosnia. The Bush administration
defined American interest in that stability exclusively as regional
stability. Moral concern over Bosnia became American vital national
interest only after Bosnia destabilized the whole region. Before then
Bosnia served to destabilize European foreign and security policy
and as a break to find new transatlantic partnerships.
Can Bosnian stability be preserved without foreign troops? Will it
be compromised by a terrorist action? No, it is threatened by an unjust
system coming out of a just peace in Dayton. Its application and its
amendment is the "catch 22" in Bosnia. If the Republic of
Srpska is not abolished, BiH and the region will be destabilized in
time; if it is abolished, destabilization will also take place. Terrorism
cannot improve that constellation, and therefore terrorism will not
have real space in which to play out, except as food for media antagonization.
This is particularly true of global terrorism, which cannot ensure
enough financial, logistical or spiritual resources here in the long
run.
However, Zbigniew Brzezinski predicts that "the EU expansion
and the NATO enlargement" will, on its path eastward, meet the
dangers of "a geopolitical no-man's-land". And I would say
that geopolitically lukewarm approach of the EU to Bosnia makes Bosnia,
still, a geopolitical everyone's land.
References
(1) Paul Todd & Jonathan Bloch, Global Intelligence: the World's
Secret Services
Today, London & New York, Zed Books, 2003.
(2) Trent Lott & Ron Wyden, "Hiding the Truth in a Cloud
of Black Ink,"
The New York Times, August 26, 2004.
(3) Robert Kagan and William Kristol (eds.), Present Dangers: Crisis
and
Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy, San Francisco,
Encounter Books, 2000.
(4) Gore Vidal, Imperial America: Reflections on the United States
of Amnesia,
New York, Nation Books, 2004.
(5) Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choice: Global Domination or Global
Leadership,
New York, Basic Books, 2004.
(6) Franco Ferracuti, "Ideology and Repentance: Terrorism in
Italy", in Origins of
Terrorism, ed. Walter Reich, Washington Woodrow Wilson
Center Press, 1998.
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