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Abstract
Peace-building situations can be described as battlefields of ideas where key international policy makers engage in internal battles for control over intervention policy. Knowledge production, based on timely information and analysis, is seen as crucial to winning these battles of ideas. By providing detailed information, analysis and recommendations, the International Crisis Group (icg) has assumed an important role in this process. Yet we know little about the specific role the icg plays in battles for intervention policy. This article investigates icg analyses and recommendations and the way they fit into the specific internal debates within the international community in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in 2000–01. By looking at the work of the icg in BiH around the elections in 2000, the article demonstrates that it often acted as a legitimising agent of US positions and policy in the country.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Florian Krampe, Christin Mays, Greg Simons, the members of the ‘Knowledge and Power in Security Governance’ network, and the anonymous reviewers for valuable comments, as well as the Swedish Research Council and the Hugo Valentin Centre at Uppsala University for funding fieldwork in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Notes
1. Eriksson and Kostić, Mediation and Liberal Peacebuilding.
2. Ibid.
3. For the original formulation, see Kennan, “Introduction.” For similar examples, see Dlouhy, “On Corruption in Bosnia–Herzagovina”; and O’Brien, “The Dayton Agreement in Bosnia.”
4. Ibid., O’Brien, 106.
5. The icg itself considers the 2000 report War Criminals in rs as one of its more successful in terms of its impact. icg, Fifteen Years on the Frontlines, 24.
6. For recent attempts to address the issue, see Leroux-Martin, Diplomatic Counterinsurgency; and Waldman, “The Use of Statebuilding Research.”
7. Swain, Neither War nor Not War, 72, 96.
8. Ibid., 72.
9. Cf. Leroux-Martin, Diplomatic Counterinsurgency.
10. Ibid., 142–149.
11. Ibid., 203.
12. Ibid., 202.
13. Ibid., 205.
14. A narrative is defined as ‘a coherent system of interrelated and sequentially organised stories that share a common rhetorical desire to resolve a conflict by establishing audience expectations according to the known trajectories of its literary and rhetorical form’. Schmid, Al-Qaeda’s ‘Single Narrative’, 5. For a similar definition, see also Crannell and Sheppard, “Preparing to Lead with a Compelling Narrative,” 11–21; and UK Ministry of Defence, Strategic Communication.
15. UK Ministry of Defence, Strategic Communication, 11.
16. Wedel, Shadow Elite, 26.
17. Trudeau et al., “Insights from Global Environmental Governance,” 15.
18. Green, “Private Standards in the Climate Regime”; and Green, “Private Authority on the Rise.”
19. Trudeau et al., “Insights,” 15.
20. Medvetz, Hybrid Intellectuals.
21. For more on flex-net and flexians, see Wedel, Shadow Elite, 14.
22. Wedel, Shadow Elite; Medvetz, Hybrid Intellectuals; and Medvetz, “Murky Power.”
23. Wedel, Shadow Elite, 2.
24. Ibid., 41.
25. Ibid., 26.
26. Kostić, Reconciling the Past and the Present.
27. Swain, Neither War nor Not War, 23.
28. McMahon, “Rebuilding Bosnia,” 557; and Chandler, “From Dayton to Europe,” 338.
29. Daalder, “Bosnia after sfor,” 17.
30. O’Brien, “The Dayton Agreement in Bosnia,” 107.
31. McMahon, “Rebuilding Bosnia,” 573.
32. Swain, Neither War nor Not War, 190.
33. Ibid., 207.
34. Ibid., 207.
35. For a good overview of nato’s information and psy-ops activities, see Siegel, “Target Bosnia.”
36. Swain, Neither War nor Not War, 220.
37. Ibid., 223–224.
38. Ibid., 223.
39. Ibid., 220.
40. US Department of State, “nato Confirms Anti-Dayton Intelligence Activities in Bosnia.”
41. Swain, Neither War nor Not War, 244.
42. Warner et al., sfor Lessons Learned.
43. Swain, Neither War nor Not War, 244.
44. As elaborated in interviews with the High Representative (1999–2002) Wolfgang Petritsch, December 28, 2013, January 12, 2014.
45. Interview with Wolfgang Petritsch, December 28, 2013.
46. Belloni, “Peacebuilding and Consociational Electoral Engineering,” 342–343.
47. Holbrooke, “Battles after the War.”
48. Interviews with Wolfgang Petritsch.
49. Perlez, “Top Bosnian Serb Agrees to Resign.”
50. Interviews with Wolfgang Petritsch.
51. icg, War Criminals in Bosnia's Republika Srpska.
52. Ibid., 6.
53. Ibid., 8.
54. Apparently Richard Holbrooke was given a chance to comment on a draft of the icg report. Correspondence with a former member of the international community in BiH, January 8, 2014. Dissemination of pre-published drafts to the relevant parties for comments seems to have been a general icg strategy at the time. The author is in possession of extensive e-mail exchanges between icg and osce BiH staff regarding the content of the report The Continuing Challenge of Refugee Return in Bosnia & Herzegovina, which was eventually published on December 13, 2002.
55. See also Holbrooke, “Speech”.
56. Email correspondence with a former member of the international community in BiH, January 8, 2014.
57. According to Petritsch, Prlić and Zubak were some of the key Croat politicians cooperating with the international community at the time. Interview Wolfgang Petritsch, January 12, 2014. Prlić was found guilty together with six other high-ranking officials of Herceg-Bosna and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment by the icty on May 29, 2013. Zubak is the only high-ranking official of Herceg-Bosna who has not been included in the investigation by the icty.
58. Email correspondence with a former member of the international community in Bosnia and Herzegovina, January 8, 2014.
59. ohr, “Meeting of the High Representative and the sds Leadership.”
60. icg, Reunifying Mostar, 34–35.
61. Ibid., 35.
62. Ibid., 57.
63. Ibid., 58, 68.
64. Ibid., 67.
65. At the December 1997 Peace Implementation Council meeting in Bonn, the Council endorsed the High Representative’s proposal to form an afu to assist authorities in BiH in identifying illegal activities and to coordinate international technical assistance. The Unit was established within the ohr Economics Department in April.
66. Written correspondence with the head of the afu of the ohr from August 2000 to June 2002, Manfred Dauster, March 17, 2013.
67. Robinson, “Interim Report,” 12.
68. Interview with Wolfgang Petritsch, 28 December 2013.
69. Personal correspondence with a former senior member of the ohr, March 2013.
70. Interview with a senior Norwegian diplomat working in BiH in the early 2000s, Stockholm, May 2006.
71. Interview with Wolfgang Petritsch, December 28, 2013.
72. See, further, Belloni, “Peacebuilding and Consociational Electoral Engineering,” 346.
73. British Helsinki Human Rights Group, Bosnia Herzegovina 2001, 6.
74. Kostić, “American Nation-building Abroad,” 36.
75. Personal correspondence with Manfred Dauster, March 17, 2013.
76. Ibid.,, March 17, 20, 2013.
77. Interview with Wolfgang Petritsch, December 28, 2013.
78. The pic communiqué talks about strengthening the afd and supporting the ohr in fighting criminality and corruption. pic, “Communiqué by the pic Steering Board.”
79. According to Petritsch, US ambassador Thomas Miller approached him at some point in mid-2001 and informed him that they had given up on taking over his position. Interview with Wolfgang Petritsch, December 28, 2013.
80. Ibid.
81. Ibid.
82. icg, Turning Strife to Advantage.
83. Ibid.
84. Personal communication with Manfred Dauster, March 24, 2013.
85. Ibid.
86. Robinson, “Interim Report,” 12.
87. Ibid.
88. Ibid.
89. Bennett, Bosnia’s Paralysed Peace, 80.
90. He was kidnapped and taken back to Bosnia in April 2009 but managed to escape and cross the border back to Croatia without being apprehended by the BiH police. See V.S., “Jelavić.”
91. The afd produced internal documents containing an explicit deconstruction of Serb and Bosniak informal political and economic networks. The author is in possession of one such afd presentation.
92. Interview with a high-positioned member of the ohr, Sarajevo, November 28, 2012.
93. Kostić, “Education through Regulation?”