Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2004

Bosnia Herzegovina in 2004

Area: 51,209 sq km (19,772 sq mi)
Population (2004 est.): 3,870,000
Capital: Sarajevo
Heads of state: Nominally a tripartite presidency chaired by Dragan Covic, Sulejman Tihic from February 28, and, from October 28, Borislav Paravac; final authority resides in the Office of the High Representative, Paddy Ashdown, Baron Ashdown (U.K.)
Head of government: Prime Minister Adnan Terzic

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, as in previous years, efforts in 2004 to reintegrate and reform the two entities that make up the country—the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serbian Republika Srpska (RS)—were pushed through by international pressure. The continuing weakness of the state and the failure of RS to arrest a single suspect wanted by the International War Crimes Tribunal were the major obstacles blocking Bosnia and Herzegovina’s eligibility for membership in NATO’s Partnership for Peace program.

In January the Office of the High Representative (OHR), which administered Bosnia and Herzegovina, expressed its dissatisfaction with Mostar’s inability to speed its reintegration process and reacted by combining that city’s six municipal governments into a single city council with specific orders to ensure that the city remained united. High Representative Paddy Ashdown also gerrymandered the voting districts to prevent any one group from dominating. Mostar’s 16th-century Old Bridge, which had been destroyed by Bosnian Croat forces in 1993, was reopened in July.

In June Ashdown clamped down on governmental foot-dragging in RS by firing 59 Bosnian Serb officials, and he issued a report the following month on the governing Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), suggesting widespread tax evasion, abuse of power, and corruption. The moves were interpreted as a direct response by the OHR to the Serbs’ lack of cooperation and alleged involvement with former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, an indicted war criminal. The RS parliament responded by passing a resolution urging all indicted war criminals, including Karadzic, to turn themselves in or face arrest. In October both entities held local elections in 142 municipalities. For the first time since 1990 the Bosnians themselves funded and organized the balloting, and it was the first time that mayors were directly elected. Low voter turnout and apathy among younger voters, however, meant that the vast majority of offices were won by the three ruling nationalist parties.

In October a Bosnian Serb commission released its final report to the government on the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Bosniac (Bosnian Muslim) men and boys outside Srebrenica. The Bosnian Serbs acknowledged that their armed forces had planned and carried out the executions.

Amid widespread corruption and a lacklustre economy, Bosnia continued to find ways of attracting foreign investments. In August the transnational firm LNM Holdings announced that it had purchased a 51% stake in BH Steel, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s largest producer. Independent state auditors reported that the country’s presidency and other officials had squandered millions of dollars of tax revenues on luxuries such as automobiles and gifts for foreign dignitaries. No laws or decrees regulating these expenses existed, and no criminal proceedings were brought against any official. The government failed to legislate reforms proposed by the EU calling for the creation of 45 new laws and 25 new agencies. At the end of the year, NATO turned over command of peacekeeping activities to the 7,000-strong EU force.

Milan Andrejevich