IV. IMPLEMENTATION AND CHALLENGES

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Notes

¹Rohan Maxwell, ‘Moving Off the Beach’, memo, 30 September 2005.

²‘Law on Defence of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Adopted on 5 October 2005 by the House of Representatives’, Official Gazette of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 88/05, Article 59.

³The reasons for which may have included political obstructionism, since some DRC members may have felt pressured into agreeing to the elimination of entity roles in defence but hoped to delay or prevent implementation, or may have accepted the reform but still wished to perpetuate ethnic and entity power bases within new structures. Others may have had more straightforward concerns such as mistrust of change or concern over future employment prospects.

⁴BiH Law on Defence, 2005.

⁵Author correspondence with William Thomas, co-chair (NHQSa), Legal Working Group, 3 March 2013. Some BiH members of the Legal Working Group felt political pressures to the extent of being concerned for their jobs.

⁶MPRI programme manager comment to Rohan Maxwell (co-author), January 2006.

⁷The minister of defence issued the formal order establishing the implementation team on 13 January 2006. Raffi Gregorian, ‘Report to the High Representative on the Work of the Defence Reform Commission, by the NATO Co-Chairman’, 16 January 2006.

⁸BiH Ministry of Defence, ‘Criteria and Procedures to Extend Contracts of Professional Military Personnel and Make Contracts with Professional Military Personnel’, No. 19-34-5308/06, 10 October 2006.

⁹ BiH Ministry of Defence, ‘Criteria and Procedures to Extend Contracts of Professional Military Personnel and Make Contracts with Professional Military Personnel’, No. 19-34-5308/06, 10 October 2006.

¹⁰BiH Ministry of Defence, ‘Criteria and Procedures’.

¹¹The DRC's intention had been that serving BiH MoD staff would also go through the selection process, but this was changed before the draft legislation was adopted as procedure by the MoD. Thomas correspondence, 3 March 2013.

¹²BiH Ministry of Defence, ‘Book of Rules on the Selection Criteria for Selection of Civil Servants and Employees to be Appointed and Assigned to Jobs in the Ministry of Defence of BiH’, No. 19-34-3669-5/06, 27 July 2006.

¹³ BiH Ministry of Defence, ‘Book of Rules on the Selection Criteria for Selection of Civil Servants and Employees to be Appointed and Assigned to Jobs in the Ministry of Defence of BiH’, No. 19-34-3669-5/06, 27 July 2006.

¹⁴In contrast, the military selection criteria had attached no value to longevity of service, focusing instead on military education and training.

¹⁵The 2004 Joint Personnel Commission had been supported by an infantry colonel provided by the United Kingdom at the behest of the DRC vice-chair; MPRI advisers participated in this work as well. Their influence carried over into the 2005 DRC subgroup work.

¹⁶‘Law on Service in the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina’, 5 October 2005.

¹⁷NHQSa, ‘BiH Defence Reform and PfP Overview’, 12 November 2012.

¹⁸This refers to the Norwegian Agency for Public Management and eGovernment that is conducting a three-year project to strengthen human-resource management in the BiH MoD, at the request of the Norwegian MoD and with financial support from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The BiH Civil Service Agency has developed both goals and a strategy for achieving defined ends.

¹⁹According to the chair of the BiH Parliamentary Assembly's Joint Committee for Defence and Security, there is ‘strong dissatisfaction with young officers who see no chance of advancement’. Author interview with Dusanka Majkic, 27 February 2013.

²⁰UN Security Council, ‘Resolution 1325 (2000), Adopted by the Security Council at its 4213^th Meeting, on 31 October 2000’, S/RES/1325 (2000), <http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N00/720/18/PDF/N0072018.pdf?OpenElement>, accessed 30 March 2013.

²¹Thomas correspondence, 3 March 2013.

²²BiH Law on Defence, 2005.

²³NATO introduced the MAP in April 1999 at the Washington Summit to help countries aspiring to NATO membership with their preparations. The process drew on the experience gained during the accession of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, which that year had joined NATO in the Alliance's first post-Cold War round of enlargement. Since then, participation in the MAP has helped prepare the seven countries that joined NATO in the second post-Cold War round of enlargement in 2004 (Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) as well as the two that joined in 2009 (Albania and Croatia). Current participants in the MAP are the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, which has taken part in the MAP since 1999, and Montenegro, which was invited to join in December 2009. At the April 2008 Bucharest Summit, NATO agreed to extend an invitation to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia as soon as a mutually acceptable solution to the dispute over the country's name has been reached with Greece.

²⁴At the time of writing, control over document archives, specifically those that formerly belonged to the entity defence establishments and which cover the period 1992–95, has gained prominence as a political issue.

²⁵The final political negotiations, conducted on a bilateral basis at the ambassadorial level and supported by NHQSa's Defence Reform Secretariat, were very contentious. Thomas correspondence, 3 March 2013.

²⁶Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, ‘Size, Structure and Locations of the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina’, 5 July 2006.

²⁷DRC Secretariat, ‘Representation of Constituent Peoples in the Reform Defence Structure’, 9 June 2005.

²⁸Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, ‘Size, Structure and Locations’. The 1991 census was and is the extant basis for distribution of positions in Bosnian state institutions, including all ministries. In the case of the defence establishment, the percentage that would have been normally allocated to ‘Others’ was instead distributed proportionately among the three larger groups. This makes it difficult for ‘Others’ to join the military, although they are not prohibited from doing so; and extremely difficult for them to attain senior command positions unless they adopt one of the three main identifiers. There are obvious human-rights implications in this – a point reflected in broader EU concerns about ethnic allocations of posts in BiH institutions – as well as the practical implications of discouraging some 8 per cent of the population from considering a military career. Women, a group whose participation in armed forces is still evolving in many countries other than BiH, have equal opportunity to apply for military service, but the details remain a work in progress.

²⁹Thomas correspondence, 3 March 2013.

³⁰The RS minister of defence had argued unsuccessfully for the infantry brigades, rather than infantry battalions, to be mono-ethnic; Milovan Stankovic, ‘Views on Future Organisation of AFBiH’, Republika Srpska Ministry of Defence, Banja Luka, 18 May 2005. This would have diluted the multi-ethnic nature of the AFBiH considerably.

³¹John Andreas Olsen (co-author), personal observations from the outreach programme; NHQSa, ‘After-Action Report: NHQSa Outreach Programme in BiH 2011’, memo, 24 January 2012. Further information in this chapter regarding the outreach effort is drawn largely from this report.

³²The ten most frequently recurring themes during the NATO Outreach Programme in the RS in the period of 2010–12 were: 1) Why should Bosnia and Herzegovina consider becoming a member of NATO? What are the advantages of membership for the Serb population? 2) NATO took military action against the Serb leadership in 1995 and 1999: is it not because NATO is anti-Serb? 3) NATO has used ammunition of depleted uranium in the past: what are the repercussions of this for the civilian population living in areas that were subject to such attacks – like the town of Hadzici? Is it not so that NATO is responsible for large numbers of Serbs dying from cancer and leukemia because of its use of depleted uranium? 4) What about Kosovo? What is NATO's position on the independence of Kosovo? Is it not so that NATO wants to take Kosovo away from Serbia? 5) Would it not be better for Bosnia and Herzegovina to de-militarise? Would it not be better for Serbs if Bosnia and Herzegovina did away with its armed forces, and used the defence budget on other things? 6) Why does NATO want Bosnia and Herzegovina to join the Alliance? Is it to get more military forces to send more soldiers to Afghanistan? 7) What is the relationship between NATO and Russia? Can Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro continue to have good relations with Russia and be part of NATO at the same time? 8) Is it black and white – for or against NATO – or is there a middle ground where Bosnia and Herzegovina can stay neutral and be a partner with NATO? How does this relate to membership in the European Union? 9) What is the process for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro becoming NATO members? How will it be decided – should Republika Srpska have its own referendum on this issue? 10) When would it be realistic for Bosnia and Herzegovina to join NATO?

³³Majkic interview, 27 February 2013.

³⁴For further insight, see Majda Becirevic, Zeljka Sulc and Maja Sostaric, ‘Gender and Security Sector Reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina’, Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, Sarajevo, 2011.

³⁵The books themselves carried a direct message, as each was marked with a NATO logo and thus signalled NATO's interest in BiH as a whole and not just in the armed forces.

³⁶In the view of the chair of the BiH Parliamentary Assembly's Joint Committee for Defence and Security, building integrity is the most important task, and it has not yet been completed. Majkic interview, 27 February 2013.

³⁷Transparency International UK's International Defence and Security Programme places BiH in Band D+ of the Government Defence Anti-Corruption Index. This puts it at high risk of corruption. The index finds that whilst there are good provisions for formal legislative scrutiny of defence and security policy, there is a general lack of transparency with respect to decision-making in the sector. See <http://government.defenceindex.org/results/countries/bosnia-herzegovina#more>, accessed 25 February 2013.

³⁸The Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council – the political dimension of PfP – launched the Building Integrity programme in November 2007 to raise awareness and to develop institutional capabilities in key areas elaborated in the Partnership Action Plan on Defence Institution Building. The programme was further defined at the Lisbon Summit in 2010 and the Chicago Summit in 2012. Under its auspices, NATO conducts courses and seminars on a regular basis for civilian and military personnel, and has established the Centre for Building Integrity in the Defence Sector in Norway. The overall objectives are to: 1) improve nations’ understanding of the risks of corruption in the defence and security sector; 2) identify priorities and formulate a road ahead for common action; 3) provide advice on the application of institutional practices and procedures aimed at strengthening transparency, accountability and integrity in the defence and security sector; 4) develop benchmarks so that nations can monitor change; 5) provide education and training to promote good practice and build capacity; and 6) promote wider use of existing Building Integrity tools and mechanisms, and an understanding of how they can be used to strengthen transparency, accountability and integrity in the defence and security sector. Each country decides the number of domains in which it wishes to engage, and the scale and scope of that engagement.

³⁹Defence reform in BiH, as in most countries, focuses on developing a leaner and more cost-effective organisation and purchasing the necessary state-of-the-art equipment to ensure full operational capabilities. As nations move from enhancing technological capabilities to improving operational capacity and ensuring interoperability with partner countries, they must not forget the most important commodity of any organisation: the professional competence of their personnel. Whereas one end of the spectrum is technological and material, the other end is human and intellectual: skills, insight, knowledge, attitude and moral values are key components of professionalism. The Norwegian MoD has recently embarked on a large-scale competency reform of its defence sector, first through a fact-finding survey and then by developing a White Paper containing guidance on how to transform itself into a modern competence-oriented organisation, with competitive advantages in the future labour market. The Norwegian MoD has identified a series of programmes, projects and actions and instituted a strategic competency policy for the coming years. The policy takes into account ways to improve the recruitment system, the need for cognitive diversity and specialists, performance-management criteria and differentiated incentive systems. This in turn has consequences for the education model and which positions should be held by civilians and military personnel. Having defined the desired levels of competence, and compared them with the current situation, the MoD designed its strategic competency policy to bridge the gaps. While the Norwegian MoD obviously functions differently from that of BiH, the same philosophy may well be applicable.