Continuity gaps slow Bosnia mission

By Douglas Hamilton

SARAJEVO (Reuters): More than five years after the end of the Bosnian war Westerners are still being sent in to help sort out the aftermath.

Although those in charge of the civilian organizations overseeing peace operations have experience of the Balkans, elsewhere there seems to be only short-term expediency about handling what everyone admits is a long-term international mission.

"I've just been here five weeks," said a U.S. officer attached to the NATO-led SFOR mission in Bosnia. "I'll be here for three months only, I'm embarrassed to say."

"I've just got here," said a retired French general from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), who then proceeded to brief reporters.

SFOR commander Gen. Michael Dodson is leaving shortly after a year's assignment. He is the seventh since NATO peacekeepers were deployed in 1995 to stop Bosnia's Muslims, Serbs and Croats going back to war.

About two-thirds of the international people at the Office of High Representative Wolfgang Petritsch, the top international peace overseer, are on one year secondments.

Bosnia is clearly a "hardship" posting for foreign envoys and experts, with few facilities for expatriate families. In the NATO peace mission, six-month stints are the rule, though some re- enlist.

When NATO's 19 permanent ambassadors come down every six months or so to see for themselves what progress is being made -- or not -- towards a unified Bosnia-Herzegovina, many have permanent Bosnia-based embassies to brief them.

But what they may also hear, in part, are the assessments of virtual newcomers which may add little fresh knowledge.

"Continuity is a problem especially in the military and the international police," said a Bosnia veteran in the Petritsch team. "It's a little better now on the civilian side with permanent embassies.

"But it takes months on end to begin to figure out what's going on here, and then you're about to leave again..."

International police spend only six months in the country, often leaving long term investigations up in the air with no real handover to their equally short-term successors.

"It's quite demanding and you do burn out. But I would say two, three years would be a minimum, or four for those with the stamina," said the official, one of the few foreign workers here who witnessed the 1992-1995 siege of Sarajevo first hand.

Those without that experience realize as their short assignments run out that it takes time to grasp the depth of ethnic hatred and mistrust which keeps Bosnia divided, despite the West's inducements.

"There's the mentality, and there's also the war history," said the official. "Many of the old faces are still in politics and it helps to know them and know what their past roles were."

One NATO colonel, addressing the problem, said the military were "very good at getting in quickly but painfully slow to reorganize for a long stay, yet we know well we'll be here for years to come".

Just how long will depend on the Bosnians themselves, said NATO Secretary General George Robertson, who led NATO envoys on a 48-hour fact-finding mission to Albania and Bosnia last week.

Robertson said the allies "delivered a pretty blunt message to the authorities that we are not happy with their leadership ... with progress that is moving at a snail's pace".

"They were left in no illusion. We are not planning to leave but there is growing frustration with this unwillingness to take ownership of their own future," he told reporters on his plane.

This month's transfer to the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague of ousted Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic sparked strong criticism of NATO by the tribunal's chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, who accused the allies of shirking the risk involved in capturing big fish still at large.

NATO is now turning that pressure on Bosnian Serb leaders suspected of turning a blind eye to the presence of wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic, both of whom were indicted by the tribunal for genocide in 1995.

NATO was not willing to accept "lame excuses", Robertson said. "If they know where Karadzic is they can do it themselves or they can tell us."

The NATO chief said, however, that there had been "no reliable sightings of Karadzic in the past few years". The reports were as reliable as sightings of Elvis, he added.

The arrest of Karadzic and Mladic is becoming an acid test of Bosnia's determination to break with its past and catch up with the rapid democratization in neighboring Serbia -- no longer a hiding place for the two big suspects on the run.

The economy, still crippled despite US$5 billion of post-war infrastructure aid from the international community, is burdened by defense spending to keep three armies on the payroll where the West wants to see one, radically downsized force.

"There has been no progress on a common uniform or common insignia," said Dutch Colonel Jack Van Maaswall, whose SFOR assignment is to help forge a unified armed force under a single defense ministry, though with ethnically distinct brigades.

Ethnically-mixed units "would be a bridge too far", he said, adding that for the purposes of sanity, it was best not to set too ambitious deadlines.

"It's going to need generational change," he said. "We see meetings where they won't even shake hands.