Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: La Bosnia a sette anni da Dayton

A sette anni alla fine della guerra e l'entrata nella Bosnia
dell'ammnistrazione internazionale (ai fini di "stabilizzare" il paese
e prepararlo alla democrazia), la Bosnia e' ancora una colonia della
NATO/EU.
I poteri dei rappresentanti occidentali sono pressoche' totali, e le
autorita'
elette dai Bosniaci non hanno nessuna autorita', ne' legislativa ne'
amministrativa.
Nessuno sa quando dove questa "stabilizzazione" sta andando e quando
finira'.
Kosovo, Afghanistan e Irak stanno ovviamente procedendo in diretta
nella stessa direzione.
Democrazia e autodeterminazione dei popoli, evidentemente, erano una
peculiarita' del secolo scorso.
http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/00000006DE68.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,991947,00.html
Lording it over Bosnia
by Philip Cunliffe
Lord Paddy Ashdown, the United Nations' High Representative of Bosnia
Herzegovina, is effectively the international community's tsar in the
Balkans. Recently, however, his almost limitless powers have come
under attack.
The European Stability Initiative (ESI) think tank has launched a
broadside against the international protectorate in Bosnia (1). The
ESI's Gerald Knaus and Felix Martin wrote an article for the Journal
of Democracy entitled 'Lessons from Bosnia and Herzegovina: travails
of the European Raj', and have kickstarted a debate on 'liberal
imperialism' on their website (2).
Julian Braithwaite, spokesperson for the Office of the High
Representative (OHR) in Bosnia, wrote a tetchy response to the UK
Guardian's letters page on 7 July, accusing the ESI of self-promotion
and inaccurate reporting - though he failed to mention any specific
instances (3). The High Representative himself then entered the fray
on 11 July, writing a piece for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Ashdown deftly avoided any reference to his own role, but acknowledged
the critics who 'compare the international community's powers in
Bosnia to those of a dictator or colonial governor' (4).
Ashdown's defensiveness is surprising, given that he has previously
conceded much of what the ESI report claims. Less than a year ago,
Ashdown told the Guardian: 'What we have [in Bosnia] is
near-imperialism.' He said that his job incorporates 'a Gilbert and
Sullivan title and powers that should make a liberal blush' - though
as the Guardian's Julian Glover wryly noted, Ashdown wasn't blushing
(5).
So extensive are Ashdown's powers that the ESI report cannot help but
draw upon Britain's colonial history in India to illuminate the
'extraordinary political reality' in present-day Bosnia Herzegovina:
'In Sarajevo in the early twenty-first century, as in Calcutta in the
nineteenth, foreigners play the part of "benevolent despots".' (6) The
report presents a cogent summary of this 'unlimited authority of an
international mission to overrule all of the democratic institutions
of a sovereign member state of the United Nations' (7).
According to the ESI report, the OHR has so much power that it has
tied itself in knots trying to exercise it. In 1999, the third High
Representative, Wolfgang Petritsch, dismissed elected Serbian mayor
Mile Marceta without even citing a specific violation of the Dayton
Peace Agreement (usually the justification given for the OHR's summary
dismissals).
Marceta was an eminent non-nationalist leader of a displaced persons'
movement, whose public championing of multiethnic return irked
'international field officers, who resented [his] visibility and his
impatience with their mission's lack of progress toward securing the
right of return'. These field officers made common cause with local
Croat nationalists to secure Marceta's dismissal - thus producing a
situation where the 'OHR had dismissed an elected official not for
blocking or ignoring the implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement,
but for trying too hard to implement it' (8).
Ironically, as evidenced by the ESI report, the High Representative
has even fewer legal constraints on his formal powers than that other
tinpot Balkan dictator, Slobodan Milo?evic. Ashdown can 'dismiss
presidents, prime ministers, judges, mayors, without having to submit
[the OHR's] decisions for review by any independent appeals body. [The
OHR] can veto candidates for ministerial positions without needing
publicly to present any evidence for its stance. It can impose
legislation and create new institutions without having to estimate the
cost to Bosnian taxpayers. In fact, the OHR is not accountable to any
elected institution at all.' (9)
In his article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Ashdown
dismisses the need for votes, arguing that the OHR can claim its
legitimacy from opinion polls, which indicate that the 'people of
Bosnia?support [the OHR's] powers and think they are used not too
much, but if anything too little' (10). The votes tell a different
story: voter turnout has progressively diminished as the OHR has
entrenched its powers; in the October 2002 elections, Bosnia's
fragmented ethnic constituencies expressly countermanded the High
Representative's 'advice', by casting more votes for nationalists than
for Ashdown's favourites.
Contrary to Julian Braithwaite's assertion, the ESI's report is up to
date - but it does cover ground that has been covered before, notably
by David Chandler in his book Bosnia: Faking Democracy After Dayton,
an indictment of the Bosnian nation-building experiment (11). Chandler
has tracked Ashdown's record as 'colonial governor' since Ashdown took
up the post of High Representative on 27 May 2002. So more interesting
than the ESI report's detail, is its analysis of the dynamics
underlying 'mission creep' in the Bosnian protectorate, and the
historical analogy it draws upon.
The report notes that, when the OHR was established, it had no formal
powers at all. But after having purged the entire management board of
the Bosnian Serb television broadcaster and sending troops to occupy
the broadcaster's transmitters in May 1997, the OHR began to scale
'the commanding heights of what amounts to a system of "indirect
rule"' (12). After this intervention, the OHR's overseer, the Peace
Implementation Council (a biennial gathering of 50 foreign ministries
chaired by the OHR), granted the OHR sweeping new powers.
These so-called 'Bonn powers' became the OHR's weapons of choice. From
1997 to 1999, High Representative Carlos Westerndorp despatched an
average of four 'impositions' a month. Under Ashdown, the figure has
more than tripled to 'about 14 decisions each month' (13) - though
Braithwaite claims it is 'only' 11 (14).
The problem identified in the ESI report is the 'illusory' belief that
well-intentioned international state-building missions are exempt from
the 'universal laws of power'. Although the ESI claims there is a need
for authoritarian rule in exceptional circumstances - such as Bosnia's
'postcommunist', post-civil war polity - its report emphasises the
necessity of formal checks: 'Missing from the outset, however were
substantive or procedural checks on the use of the new [Bonn] powers'
(15). This explanation amounts to little more than the old adage that
'Absolute power corrupts absolutely' - ultimately an unsatisfactory
explanation of gritty political realities.
'Vague and general criteria [as in the Bonn powers] lead inexorably
toward the open-endedness of the Utilitarians' civilising imperialism,
which is ultimately incompatible with the objective of
democratisation', argues the ESI report (16). The ESI proposes that an
independent commission be established to review the OHR's legislative
impositions and summary dismissals, composed 'ideally by elected
Bosnian legislators who might be joined by members from?the European
parliament or the US Congress' (17).
But the overarching problem to be contained here is not 'vague and
general criteria'. Constructing transnational checks and balances on
the OHR's arbitrary powers may help to shield the Bosnian electorate
from the worst effects of Ashdown's authoritarianism. But all the
checks in the world will not suppress the impulse underlying the OHR's
boundless appetite for power: namely, the assumption that it has not
merely the right, but the duty, to direct Bosnians' lives.
The ESI report claims that originally the 'High Representative was to
fill the role of a senior?diplomat with enough moral weight to help
settle disputes' (18). This is a disingenuous claim. What imbued the
OHR with 'moral weight' was precisely the assumption that the
'international community' has the political right and moral authority
to shape the lives of lesser, wayward peoples. Institutions shape
politics; they do not create it. Having abrogated the fundamental
starting point of democratic politics - the right to
self-determination - the OHR proceeded to construct the legal
framework it needed to fulfil its authoritarian guiding principles.
The weakness of the ESI's conclusion exposes the ambivalence in its
notion of 'liberal imperialism'. The prefix 'liberal' seems designed
to cushion the readers' delicate sensibilities from the ugliness of
the word 'imperialism' when it stands alone. 'Liberal imperialism' is
meant to evoke irrepressible benevolence, as incarnated by those
misguided Utilitarians. Without the benefit of prefixes however,
'imperialism' alone is associated with Nazism, racism, plunder and
rapine.
The only possible response to those who wax lyrical about the
benevolent varieties of imperialism is to ask: is there any other
kind? When has imperialism not been irrepressibly benevolent and
well-intentioned? Even in its most barbarous moments, imperialism has
justified itself in the language of harsh necessity and 'unavoidable'
costs.
Ironically, the difficult history of imperialism that the prefix
'liberal' tries to hide is exemplified by Ashdown's own career. Never
having been elected to an official position in Britain, Ashdown
remains a minor political personality. Nonetheless, his remarkable
life and career capture the forward strides and dramatic retreats of
twentieth-century politics - on the international stage that is, not
the domestic.
Before his entry into British politics, Ashdown's military career was
devoted to buttressing the retreat of the British imperium. He served
as an officer in the Royal Marines from 1959 to 1972, having the
distinction of seeing active service in two of the twentieth century's
most successful 'counter-insurgency' campaigns, in Borneo and the
Arabian Gulf - campaigns that amounted to little more than terrorising
the locals (19). After returning to England in 1970, he was given
command of a Commando Company in Belfast, before entering parliament
in the 1983 general election (20).
Ashdown's latest job represents the logical conclusion to a career
devoted to imperial policing around the world - from South East Asia
via the Middle East to Northern Ireland, finally to the Balkans. Born
in New Delhi in 1941, when the Raj had less than a decade left in
existence, Ashdown has not let the twilight of the British Empire
impede him from becoming governor-general of his own satrapy.

politics - the right to self-determination -
Balle :)
-Stefano


La storia si ripete, gli anglosassoni e le colonie, "gli anglosassoni senza
le colonie  sono niente, sono costretti a crearle e sfruttarle"  Metternick.
Chissa' cosa sara' dell'Irak tra sette anni ?
--
http://www.hyperlinker.com/spg/
-
http://www.hyperlinker.com/spg/pppop.htm
-----------------------------------------------------------

La storia si ripete,
Se lo dici tu... :)))
*LOL*
-Stefano

Chissa' cosa sara' dell'Irak fra sette anni.
Se le cose vanno come vogliono i governi, sara' come la Bosnia di oggi.
Se no, da' un'occhiata alla CisGiordania.
GT

musliman, idi u picku materinu!
Prima spara e poi dě: "Chi va la?"; meglio un amico morto che un nemico vivo.

Sia allora, in Libia e Etipia, che adesso nella "coalizione" di Bush.
Infatti in Iraq c'e' il nostro ufficio coloniale con poteri di vita e di
morte :)))
*ROTFL*
-Stefano