Localizing Peacebuilding: The Arizona Market and the Evolution of U.S. Military Peacebuilding Priorities in Bosnia

ABSTRACT

This article examines peacebuilding localization, in particular how encounters with local contexts and actors shape external peacebuilders' priorities and practices. My vehicle for exploring this dynamic is the rapid emergence of a massive black market in northeast Bosnia, the ‘Arizona’ market, which developed on territory controlled by U.S. peacekeeping forces. I argue that the military's relationship with the market contributed to a shift from an initially minimalist, peacekeeping-centric, conception of the peacebuilding process toward the embrace of broader post-war political and economic initiatives, and identify three factors that influenced its unfolding in the case of Arizona: adaptation, embeddedness and place.

KEYWORDS:

• Peacebuilding
• Bosnia
• encounter
• markets
• place

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. On resistance and hybridity see Richmond 2010; MacGinty 2011; Jarstad and Belloni 2012; Chandler 2013. For good analyses of the concept of hybridity in peacebuilding research see Millar 2014 and Peterson 2012.

2. On prominent micro-level studies of violence, see Kalyvas 2006; Straus 2006; Weinstein 2007.

3. On processes of localization and delocalization see also Kappler 2015.

4. Interview and archival research for this project was conducted over almost a decade, beginning with dissertation fieldwork in 2006. The three primary archival sources consulted for this project are: 1) the OHR Brčko field office archives—which include memos, emails and other material from other international organizations in the country concerning Arizona; 2) 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division field reports from Bosnia in 1996; and 3) the Mediacentar’s Bosnian print media archives in Sarajevo.

5. Rakija is a popular liquor—typically made from plums in the Brčko area—that is widely consumed in Bosnia and the region.

6. The details from this paragraph come from Cucolo interview. There is a widespread misconception—repeated in both in academic articles and unpublished internal memos and analyses of Arizona by international organizations in Bosnia—that the U.S. military ‘established’ or conceived of the Arizona Market. However both Cucolo and multiple Bosnian sources I have talked with in Brčko are in agreement in characterizing trade as a spontaneous occurrence, independent of signals from U.S. forces in the area or local political leaders.

7. Memorandum for: Commander, TF Eagle. Subject: Commander’s Assessment for 29 April 1996. Department of the Army. Headquarters, 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division. Operation Joint Endeavor (copy of file with author); Semonite 1999.

8. Memorandum for: Commander, TF Eagle. Subject: Commander’s Assessment for 24 June 1996. Department of the Army. Headquarters, 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division. Operation Joint Endeavor (copy of file with author).

9. E.g., ‘Bosnia: Market Shimmer.’ Economist. 7 September 1996; ‘Black Market Thrives in Northern Bosnia.’ NPR, September 11, 1996: Morning Edition; ‘At Last, a Unifying Force in Bosnia: Making Money.’ New York Times, October 17, 1996; ‘U.S. Troops Lead Bosnia’s Rebuilding.’ Washington Post, October 27, 1996.

10. ‘Bosnia: Market Shimmer.’ Economist. 7 September 1996.

11. Opština is typically translated as municipality, though in the U.S. context it is more analagous to a county as a form of local administation.

12. Unlike elsewhere in Bosnia relations between Croats and Bosniaks in the Brčko area remained peaceful throughout the war.

13. For more on this see ‘Razloz Zbog Pijace i Policije’ [Divorce Because of Market and Police], Dani, 2 March 1998.

14. Sherwell, Philip Sherwell, ‘Guns, Girls, Drugs, Fake Track Suits: It’s All Here in the Wildest Market in the World’, Sunday Telegraph. 19 November 2000; ‘Arizona Market Report’, Interagency Arizona Market Working Group, 30 November 1999 (copy on file with author).

15. Jennings defines the peacekeeping economy as ‘the economic multiplier effect of peacekeeping operations via direct or indirect resource flows into the local economy’ (2010, 231). According to her there are several elements that constitute the peacekeeping economy. The first is formal employment with international organizations and peacekeeping forces, including local interpreters (see Baker 2012, 2014 for an analysis of this population in Bosnia). In addition to formal employment the peacekeeping economy also consists of informal work for international staff; the development of industries that cater to internationals like restaurants and bars, hotels and apartments, and the sex industry; and investments in postwar reconstruction of infrastructure and housing. On trafficking and sexual exploitation by peacekeepers see Donovan 2015. For more on the peacekeeping economy see the 2015 special issue ‘Service, sex, and security: Everyday life in the peacekeeping economy’ (Volume 9, Issue 3) in Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding.

16. Clarke interview; Jeffrey Smith, ‘Bosnian Mart Becomes Den of Criminal Enterprise; Thieves, Tax Cheats Thrive In U.S.-Sponsored Venture’, Washington Post, 26 December 1999.

17. DPA Annex 10, Article 2; Neville-Jones 1996.

18. Quoted in Scott and Murphy 2005, 14.

19. See also Scott and Murphy 2005, 14.

20. ‘Engineers Clear Minefield, Go to Market’, Talon (Task Force Eagle). 6 September 1996, p. 5.

21. ‘Elvis Spotted at Local Market’, Talon (Task Force Eagle). 29 August 1997, p. 10.

22. E.g. ‘Market Deals in Hope in Struggling Bosnia’, USA Today. 14 October 1997; ‘Transcript: Joint Press Conference’, Coalition Press Information Center, Sarajevo, 29 August 1997. http://www.nato.int/SFOR/trans/1997/t970825a.htm

23. ‘Farmers Market: Former Enemies Trade Together’, Talon (Task Force Eagle), 27 February 1998, p. 3.

24. Anić became a prominent political figure in NHI, becoming the Federation's defence minister in 2000 following electoral results that led to the formation of a moderate political coalition excluding SDA and HDZ from power in the entity.

25. ‘Zatvori ‘Arizonu’!’ [Close Arizona!], Dnevni Avaz, 3 April 1998; ‘Hoće li Klajn Zatvoriti 'Arizonu'?’’ [Will Klein Close Arizona?], Dnevni Avaz, 5 April 1998.

26. ‘Arizona Market’, UN International Police Task Force-Multinational Specialized Unit, Undated (Distributed to the Principals by email 4 April 2000). (Copy on file with author).

27. ‘Arizona Market Briefing’, Multinational Specialized Unit, Regiment HQ-G2 (SFOR), 14 April 2000, pp. 5 and 6 (Powerpoint slides 53, 54). (Copy on file with author).

28. This echoes Nathalie Duclos and Cécile Jouhanneau’s observation about the imprecision and fluidity of local conditions and mandates for international police serving with the UN mission in Bosnia, which provided broad latitude for French gendarmes to draw on familiar policing and surveillance repertoires when conducting their mission. See Duclos and Jouhanneau, 2019.

29. Quoted in Scott and Murphy 2005, 1.

30. I am not the first to identify embeddedness as a critical component of peacebuilding. Ann Holohan (2005) also highlights this factor in her analysis of UN operations in two municipalities in Kosovo.

31. I am drawing this rumour analogy from Patrick Jackson and Daniel Nexon’s influential call for processual relational theorization in international relations (Jackson and Nexon 1999, 302).

32. Niels Nagelhus Schia and John Karlsrud gesture toward this with their introduction of the term ‘friction sites’ (Nagelhus and Karlsrud 2013). More developed and useful is Lieba Faier’s invocation of ‘sites of encounter’, which draws upon Doreen Massey’s theorization of place (Faier 2009).