Europe and the Muslim World: European Union Enlargement and the Western Balkans

Abstract

The Muslim aspect of both Bosnia and Kosovo gave an added dimension to relations with the European Union (EU) and NATO, working in the framework of partnership and with the prospect of eventual membership for the countries. Bosnia and Kosovo offered a chance to affect one of the most important questions on the contemporary security agenda: community cohesion and integration. Both Bosnia and Kosovo have been subject to substantial international engagement. The successful outcome of those implementation processes must result in peace and partnership involving the EU, NATO and the countries of the region, but the early accomplishment of those goals will mean diminished emphasis on the war crimes issue as a condition of progress. That outcome will embed recognised, non‐radical, traditionally ‘European’ and more secular communities in the New Europe, sending significant political signals.

Acknowledgements

This article is based on a paper originally presented at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’ European Alumni conference at Yildiz Technical University in Istanbul, in October 2006, but takes account of actual events in February and early March 2007, which were foreshadowed in the initial presentation. It is based, in part, on research for a collaborative project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council’s New Security Challenges Programme (ESRC Award RES‐223‐25‐0063): Marie Gillespie, James Gow and Andrew Hoskins, ‘Shifting Securities: Television News Cultures Before and After Iraq 2003’. The empirical research for the project is located under protected access (initially at least) online at http://www.mediatingsecurity.com, where further information on the research can be found.

Notes

[1] Riga Summit Declaration, issued by the Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Riga on 29 November 2006, paragraphs 34–36.

[2] The two types of Muslim community are not restricted to Bosnia and Kosovo, however, with kin communities of Bosnia’s Muslims inhabiting Sandžak, the region straddling the border between Serbia and Montenegro, while ethnic Albanians (not all Muslims, however) live in parts of Macedonia, Montenegro and, of course, Albania itself. Because of the conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo, and the scale of international intervention, these territories are the most significant in security terms.

[3] Use of the tem ‘Bosniak’ began to associate the Muslims with titular ‘ownership’ of the multi‐ethnic country. This was an internationally facilitated re‐branding as the term was incorporated in the Dayton Accords and subsequent UN documentation without consideration for the implication the lexical association with country’s name would have, or for the ahistorical usage of a term originally devised by earlier international managers of Bosnia—the internationally sanctioned Austrian regime from 1876–1919, which invented the term as a way of trying to label all Bosnia’s communities as one to foster unity, rather than attributing it to just one of them.

[4] BBC News Online, 27 May 2005. Available online at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/analysis/38390.stm

[5] See http://iwpr.net/?p=brn&s=f&o=328893&apc_state=henh

[6] ‘Schwarz‐Schilling television address on PIC decision’, OHR Press Release, 2 March 2007.

[7] The present treatment reflects research for the ‘Shifting Securities’ project.

[8] It is essential to be aware of two issues here. The first concerns the use of ‘Islamism’ as a term. This is distinct from ‘Islamic’, despite sharing the same root. While the latter connotes anything pertaining to Islam, the religion based on the teaching of the Prophet Mohammed in its many forms and varieties, the former relates to a particular type of ideological interpretation that lays claim to the essence of Islam and is shaped by some claiming to be, or who are actually, religious leaders, and that constitutes a political doctrine, rather than a form of faith. The second issue is that some religious, or quasi‐religious, teachers, have urged violence and spawned movements, of which al‐Qa’ida is the most prominent and a brand‐leader, but there were many examples across Europe and spreading across North Africa and the Middle East before the events of 9/11 brought that name into common parlance (see Pargeter 2006).

[9] Parekh is a member of the House of Lords, the upper chamber of the British parliament, and has been involved in various strands of activity to promote the integration of communities in the United Kingdom, as well as the development of minority rights awareness. The Chief Rabbi in England, Jonathan Sacks, has spoken of two models (following John Gray): the first of which is procedural and the second what he calls ‘modus vivendi liberalism’, which corresponds to Parekh’s millet system and Sacks suggests means that there is not one liberal democracy, overall, but a variety of communities (Sacks 2005).

[10] MORI research for the Commission on Integration and Cohesion found that 32 per cent of people had daily contact with people from other ethnic groups, while 47 per cent had weekly interaction, if shopping was taken into account. However, only a third mixed socially outside work or school with people from other ethnic groups (Commission on Integration and Cohesion 2007: 23–24).

[11] The Daily Telegraph, 5 October 2005.

[12] It is possible that a mixture of diplomacy, intelligence and prosecutorial judgement flowed together and foresaw Gotovina’s eventual detention in the Canary Isles, therefore on Spanish–EU territory.

[13] Martti Ahtisaari, as UN Special Envoy for Kosovo (and based on deep experience from Bosnia and Kosovo at earlier stages), was charged with responsibility for the ‘final status’ process.

[14] The BBC Monitoring Service provided a summary of Serbian press coverage and attitudes prior to introduction of the Ahtisaari plan, which indicated hostility to any notion of independence (BBC News, 3 February 2007). Serbian President Boris Tadić, a noted moderate and reformer, told Ahtisaari when presented with the plan, ‘that Serbia and I, as its president, will never accept Kosovo’s independence’ (The Guardian, 2 February 2007).

[15] A contrasting question in the domain of security sector reform concerned policing, where international efforts were geared towards national policing. This met with resistance, particularly from within the Republika Srpksa, which sought to retain entity control and an entity Ministry of the Interior. The principle of good policing is to be community‐based, which makes local rather than national policing make sense, while at the same time maintaining a national accountability framework to deal with questionable action at the local levels. There was a matter of principle, therefore, attached to the objections from the Republika Srpska to the notion of national policing, even if, in practice, those objections probably were based on a desire to protect those in the Interior Ministry from external scrutiny.

[16] This structure would be reserved for infantry battalions alone; other specialist, functional battalions (e.g., engineers and medics) would be in separate battalions and outside the ‘tradition’ framework.