Brčko District: Reflections From U.S. Diplomats
The inter-entity boundary line in the Brčko area was the only issue that the negotiating parties could not agree on during the Proximity Talks held in Dayton, Ohio, from November 1, 1995, to November 21, 1995. To avoid the collapse of the talks, the parties agreed to submit the Brčko question to arbitration, with the arbitration decision being final and binding on all parties. The arbitral tribunal issued its final decision, known as “The Final Award,” in 1999, thereby establishing the Brčko District of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Under the agreement, the international supervisor was appointed to serve as the district’s administrator. Brčko, once a site of vicious fighting, has become a success story, a symbol of inter-ethnic cooperation and progress. With consistent progress and evident improvement, the Office of the High Representative, which serves as the final authority overseeing the civilian implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords, decided to close its office in Brčko in 2012, with the supervisor suspending its functions at the same time. To this day, the Brčko district supervisor retains all powers and authority and could resume exercising them at any point if the conditions in the district require it. International supervision will continue until the supervisor, with the High Representative’s approval, certifies that the conditions for its closure have been met.
Several U.S. diplomats who served as international supervisors of the Brčko district or in various other capacities implementing peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina share their analysis of the Brčko arbitration and implementation, providing historical background and invaluable lessons learned for the current and future diplomatic practitioners.
William Farrand: “The Gerrymander From Hell”
I’ll try to recreate and I hope I don’t double over, but anyway, the quick description without having a white board of Bosnia as I’ve already indicated the size of the territory, but it was broken down at the Dayton Peace Accords because there was a hammered out agreement that the Serbs would have forty-nine percent of the territory and the Bosnians and the Croats, Bosniaks, which are the Muslims and the Croats would have fifty-one. Now, this was, as you can imagine, a terrific problem of allocating real estate around the country between these two entities. It meant, in the case of the Serbs, that the Serb entity ended up looking like an amoeba.
It was the gerrymander from hell. A quick description would be like this. The Croat Muslim federation, if you would visualize them in your mind as a mule standing facing roughly north-south, maybe a little bit northeast, southwest, orientation, a mule, and then over that mule would be thrown a saddle and two saddlebags. One saddlebag goes down the right-hand side, the eastern side, the other saddlebag goes down the western side to the left as you look at it. Each saddlebag was half of the Serb population, roughly half a million people in each saddlebag.
The saddlebags came together at the top of the mule with a saddle and the saddle was the narrow corridor and the pommel of the saddle was Brcko, the little city of about 85,000 people before the war that had been unremarkable for most of its history. Five hundred year old town with the banks on the Sava River which had been an internal river in Yugoslavia so it was no big deal. It had been an unremarkable town for maybe one hundred years or seventy-five years it had been under Austro-Hungarian rule control. It had marks of Austro-Hungary in the village you could see that. Read More.
Razvigor Bazala: What are Some Most Frequently Asked Questions About Brcko?
The most frequently asked questions about Brcko are: one, how do you pronounce it, and, two, why did it matter? The first question is easy to answer; Brcko is pronounced BERCH-ko. The second requires some elaboration. The Peace Implementation Council [PIC] composed of nations and international organizations that participated in the peace negotiations at Dayton, or subsequently supported the peace process in Bosnia, established an ad hoc international institution, the OHR, to oversee the implementation of the civilian aspects of the Dayton Peace Accords. The objective of the OHR is to ensure that Bosnia and Herzegovina evolves into a peaceful and viable democracy on course for integration into Euro-Atlantic institutions. The PIC authorized the OHR to adopt binding decisions when local parties seem unable or unwilling to act and to remove from office political officials who violate legal agreements of the Dayton Peace Accords. The High Representative is appointed by the PIC with the approval of the UN Security Council; he is responsible only to the PIC and is the final civil authority in Bosnia.
The PIC regarded the sole unresolved matter of the peace negotiations in Dayton, the location of the Inter-Entity Boundary Line [IEBL] in the Brcko district, an issue that could undermine the ability of the OHR to implement other civilian provisions of the accords if not addressed in a manner perceived as equitable and unbiased by the nation’s Serbian, Croatian, and Bosniak ethnicities. One of the preconditions set by the international community prior to the start of the talks was insistence that Bosnia would consist of only two political entities. That required bending arms to get Bosniak and Croats to agree to jointly govern one (the Federation) with Serbs governing the other (Republika Srpska or RS). The Serbs insisted, however, they would not enter talks unless they were guaranteed 49 percent of Bosnia’s territory, which was a considerably larger portion than their share of the nation’s total population. The international community, however, agreed to the 51/49 percent territorial split to get the Serbs to the table.
Several earlier proposals involved divisions of Bosnia’s territory into nine or ten regional enclaves, an idea quickly rejected because their boundaries would immediately become sources of discontent and tension that could undermine implementation of a peace agreement. To eliminate any further consideration of enclaves, the international community laid down another condition at the start of peace negotiations. Only a single line, not to be referred to as a border, would delineate the division of territory between the Federation and the RS. A computer program had been developed to divide Bosnia’s territory into any number of 51/49 divisions delineated by a single line; it could not, of course, determine the exact placement of that line. Those around the negotiation table in Dayton could not either. And there was the rub.
The Brcko municipality on the north-east border of Bosnia was an area about twenty-five miles long stretching along the Sava River border with Croatia and hardly three miles wide at its narrowest point. The Serbs were deeply concerned about where the IEBL would run across Brcko knowing its narrow strip of territory would be the only link connecting the two so-called saddlebags of RS territory together. When the location of the IEBL in Brcko threatened to upset negotiations in Dayton, in order to conclude the talks with a settlement, it was decided to delay further consideration of the Brcko question for a year and then deal with it through an arbitration process.
That postponement exceeded a year because the man designated as the principal arbitrator for Brcko, American judge Roberts Owen, said in 1997 he lacked information about the extent to which Dayton provisions were being implemented by both entities in the Brcko municipality. He therefore requested OHR to name a supervisor for Brcko who would have a year, until March 1998, to encourage both entities to fully implement the provisions of the Dayton Accords in Brcko municipality. At that time a report prepared by the supervisor assessing the progress made toward that end would provide the arbiter with enough information on the basis of which he could recommend where the IEBL in the Brcko municipality should be located. The supervisor would be responsible for implementing the arbiter’s decision. Read More.
Ambassador Robert Beecroft: From a Disaster to a Success Story
Brcko, a river port and market town up on the Sava River, was viciously ethnically cleansed of Bosniaks in 1992-3. Terrible things were done in those days. This was in the very first days of “ethnic cleansing.” At Dayton, Brcko was so sensitive, both geographically and socially, that when the accords were agreed in November of ’95, they couldn’t agree on Brcko — the reason being that it’s located right at the narrowest place in the saddlebags that are the Republika Srpska. Brcko is at the top of the saddle. So, the RS was not about to give it up for strategic reasons, even though it had been mainly Bosniak.
On the other hand, the Federation wanted it because it was also where the north-south lines of communication go; rail and road bridges cross the Sava into Croatia and then on to Hungary. Both entities wanted it but neither could have it. After three years of prolonged negotiations, the Brcko District was established in 1998 under the authority of the High Representative — like the District of Columbia, except it isn’t the capital. Ever since, there have been Brcko Administrators, always Americans, who report directly to the High Rep. Ten years ago, it was a shambles, surrounded by minefields. It was largely rubble. Mosques and churches in the town had been flattened. There was no economy. The bridge across the Sava River to Croatia had been blown. There were no hotels; you couldn’t stay there. We put in a series of senior FSOs as the Brcko Administrators.
They used their powers as the Deputy to the High Representative to reform the political and economic structure of Brcko. They turned the town into a laboratory. It was the first town in Bosnia and Herzegovina where the schools were integrated forcibly. It was the first place where they held elections that were really elections, where the old hardline parties didn’t just buy the process or try to dominate it. They created an effective police force.
Right at the edge of town was a major SFOR base, Camp McGovern, built right on the inter-entity boundary line. U.S. and NATO troops kept a close watch. Over time, Brcko, because of its strategic location and thanks to the process of putting enlightened local citizens in charge, has become a very most prosperous town, second only to Sarajevo. It irritates both the RS and the Federation, because Brcko is making money hand over the fist. Taxes are lower, import duties are lower, and neither entity can put its hand in the pot. They both covet it and they can’t have it. Brčko has turned from a disaster into a success story. Read More.
Read Complete Brčko District Diplomatic Oral History Accounts
Razvigor Bazala | Robert M. Beecroft | Janet L. Bogue | William Farrand | John D. Finney, Jr. | Peter W. Galbraith | Ann B. Sides