Abstract
This chapter outlines the chronological development of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s (BiH) policy toward its neighboring countries. In the case of Croatia, it focuses on BiH’s pragmatic, yet ambiguous, approach in shaping affairs with Croatia and its active engagement in forging mutually beneficial relations. BiH foreign policy toward Serbia, plagued by numerous internally crafted political challenges, is characterized by persistent episodes of dissonance, insincerity, and a high level of mistrust. Finally, BiH’s foreign policy orientation toward Montenegro serves as an example of foreign affairs engagement through the continued development of relations and long-term goals with less contention than the other two. The authors argue that BiH’s foreign policy orientation toward neighboring countries is shaped both by the active agency and interaction of institutions within their constitutional competencies and as a defensive strategy in response to foreign policy goals of neighboring countries.
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- 1.
BiH recognized Croatia on 24 January 1992. At the time all political representatives elected in the first elections were still in their posts within the Presidency and the Government of Socialist Republic of BiH.
- 2.
Ethnic Croats of the BiH had the right to become Croatian citizens based on the Law on Croatian Citizenship adopted by Croatia. Overall, in the period 1991–2010, Croatia approved 1,109,407 Croatian citizenship applications. From that number, 678,918 had BiH citizenship at the moment of application, while 834,731 were born in BiH (Koska 2013, 220).
- 3.
Sarajlić (2010, 19) argues that even if there are only 500,000 Croats in BiH, over 800,000 citizens have dual citizenship.
- 4.
The Stability Pact was initiated by the international community to encourage further development within the region with a strong support by the European Union (EU). The border agreement happened on the margins of the summit.
- 5.
Croatia requires the border around Klek peninsula (Cape of Ponta Kleka) and two smaller islands Veliki and Mali Škoj to be revised while BiH requires the same for the border parts around river Una (from the town of Ivanjska to the mouth of the river into Sava river). The BiH Council of Ministers has adopted the rules of procedure for members of the state border commission. The sea border is still unsettled. In 2015, BiH sent an official enquiry to Croatia; however, Croatia has still not replied (Directorate for European Integration of BiH 2017, 2176 ).
- 6.
Unlike other issues arising from the treaties signed in this period, the Agreement on Succession Issues is causing both states to engage in more serious bilateral negotiations. The problem is that Croatia has put a condition on the implementation of the Agreement, at least the Annex G of the Agreement, asking another property-related agreement to be signed before the implementation of the Agreement on Succession Issues. Property-related agreement should define the principles and instruments related to the process of settling the issues of property. It would also include the principles on which the financial compensation would be made between the private and legal entities of the two states. Agreement on Succession Issues available at http://narodne-novine.nn.hr/clanci/medunarodni/2004_03_2_20.html
- 7.
BiH tried again in 2009 and 2010 to protect its agriculture, which was not in accordance to the CEFTA rules. Even if the constitutional court suspended the law, it undermined BiH’s position in relation to other states.
- 8.
This had implications years later as Branimir Glavaš, a Croatian general and founder of HDZ with dual citizenship, fled to BiH after he was charged with murder and torture of Serb civilians in Osijek. He ultimately served his sentence in BiH, which upheld the conviction due to this Agreement.
- 9.
Another set of issues associated with environmental protection nearby the border between the two countries have made bilateral relations even more complicated. Croatia has objected the level of intoxicating particles released into the air by the refinery Brod situated just across the river in BiH. The Croatian side argues that the levels of contamination are much higher than those allowed in the EU; therefore, the refinery is a threat to Croatian public health. From the perspective of BiH, nuclear waste landfill which Croatia is planning to build in Trgovska gora/Dvor creates health and environmental insecurities. However, the Parliament of BiH following the Parliament of Republika Srpska has adopted a Declaration against Waste Disposal in the area of Trgovska gora in Croatia (Environmental Justice Atlas 2016).More information available at: https://ejatlas.org/conflict/nuclear-waste-disposal-at-trgovska-gora-croatia
- 10.
Agreement on European Partnership, Agreement on Cooperation in Tourism, Agreement on Mutual Data Protection, Protocol on the Cooperation in Finding Missing Persons, and Memorandum on Cooperation between Croatian Ministry for Demography, Family, Youth and Social Policy and BiH’s Ministry for Civil Affairs (Council of Ministers BiH 2017).
- 11.
How ‘constraining dissensus’ can apply here differs from its original EU-related meaning in one significant respect: while in the EU it refers to popular or societal attitudes toward an insulated polity, in BiH it is ascribed to the political elites since they determine foreign policy.
- 12.
A prime example is the Stability Pact For South Eastern Europe which concluded in 1999 and was later transformed into the Regional Cooperation Council (RCC) in 2008.
- 13.
Which succeeded FRY since the Belgrade Agreement; Serbia since 2006.
- 14.
This agreement, signed by then all five internationally recognized successor states of Former Yugoslavia, marked a beginning of a complex, long, and still ongoing process of ‘equitable distribution amongst themselves of rights, obligations, assets and liabilities’ of the former state. The distribution process is divided into seven annexes (A-G): movable and immovable property; diplomatic and consular properties; financial assets and liabilities; archives; pensions; other rights, interests, and liabilities; and private properties and acquired rights. The process has gone the furthest in Annex B dealing with the distribution of diplomatic and consular properties. Recently, in 2016, Serbia and Bosnia came to the agreement regarding the building of the Embassy of SFRY in Ankara, Turkey, which was given to Bosnia with the Serbian MFA agreeing to pay over €500,000 for the use of the said building between 2012 and 2016 (MFA BiH 2016).
- 15.
Currently, the signatory states include Western Balkan countries minus Croatia since it became the member of the EU and Moldova. The CEFTA Agreement is important for the Western Balkans because it forced the member countries to conclude association agreements with the EU and bilateral free trade agreements amongst themselves in order to enter the multilateral trade agreement. In that vein, Serbia and BiH also signed a free trade agreement, although the ratification of it took some time, and joined CEFTA in 2007. As a result, as a rule, CEFTA countries are the second foreign trade partner of each other after the EU. Furthermore, exports to Serbia take up over 87% of BiH exports to CEFTA countries (Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations of Bosnia and Herzegovina BiH 2016).
- 16.
A very good example of how intertwined the economic potentials and still unresolved political issues are is the Drina river. Major hydro-energy projects await the resolution of the border demarcation so their construction could commence.
- 17.
There is more investment in the RS entity compared to that of the Federation by Serbia.
- 18.
Bonora’s chapter discusses this in more detail.
- 19.
The Serbian Parliament passed a resolution in 2010 condemning the ‘massacre’ and apologizing that Serbia had not done more to prevent the tragedy (Sudetić 2010).
- 20.
In 2017, the Bosniak member of the Presidency, Bakir Izetbegović, son of the president who filed the original lawsuit, initiated the process of the revision of the already adjudicated lawsuit against Serbia for genocide in BiH (2007). Even though he was supported by many organizations within society, his attempt failed as he was unable to acquire consent from two other members of the Presidency. It was expected that he would not get the consent; he waited until the very last day before the deadline; therefore, one can only argue that this move had to do with the daily politics rather than with building mutual trust and furthering relations between the two countries (cf. Hodžić 2017).
- 21.
Therefore, RS signed several agreements on special parallel relation with Serbia in 1996, 2001, and 2007, aiming to establish and foster an intense cooperation between the entity and Serbia in diverse areas of economy, privatization, denationalization, science and technology, education and sport, health and social policy, tourism, environment protection, media, and human rights (cf. Marciacq 2015, 333).
- 22.
RS also blocks other foreign policy initiatives from the center, such as BiH’s recognition of Palestine and its alignment with European sanctions against Russia following the Crimean crisis.
- 23.
During each session, a plethora of agreements and protocols with a direct impact on citizens’ lives are agreed upon and signed, regarding areas such as transport, education, environment, trade, and so on. For the overview of the first joint session and the topics and agreements tackled therein, see: Balkan Insight, Serbia, Bosnia Pledge Closer Ties at Joint Session, 04 November 2015, Available at: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/serbia-bosnia-pledge-closer-ties-11-04-2015. Accessed on: 28 August 2017.
- 24.
Sandžak is a region that spans across both Montenegro and Serbia where a large majority of the population are Bosniaks.
- 25.
Prior to that Congress, Bosnian sources claim that this territory had been one of two Ottoman corridors to the Adriatic Sea, with Neum having been the second (Tuno et al. 2011).
- 26.
The so-called Deportation case relates to 66 Bosnian and mostly Muslim refugees who were unlawfully arrested in May 1992 by Montenegrin police upon arrival to the country and deported back into the hands of the Bosnian Serb army as hostages to be used for exchange upon which most of them ended up dead. Since the abovementioned acquittals, ‘the Supreme Court joined the High Court and Appellate Court of Montenegro in their erroneous interpretation of international humanitarian law and domestic criminal law’ (Human Rights Action 2015) so as to avoid establishing responsibility for war crimes, inter alia, on the grounds that such crimes could only be committed on the territory where the war was waged. It is just one of the familiar cases of war crimes in Montenegro involving Bosniaks, others being ‘Bukovica’ and ‘Kaluđerski laz’, for example.
- 27.
The acquittal of policemen accused of the deportations in 2012 coincided with the parliamentary elections in the country. Asked to comment on the use of the trials in the election campaign, the president of the Bosniak Party in Montenegro / a consistent supporter of Đukanović’s Democratic Party of Socialists, Rafet Husović, stated that it is disrespectful to the families of victims to use the case of deportation as ‘election campaign tricks’ and that these issues should be dealt with after the elections (cf. Atlas TV 2012).
- 28.
The Bosniak Party provides the majority in the parliament and participates in government. It seems that it is more convenient to keep the government posts than to scrutinize the past.
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Marković, P., Subašić, M. (2019). BiH’s Foreign Policy Toward Neighboring Countries: Patterns of Reinterpretation and Redefinition. In: Hasić, J., Karabegović, D. (eds) Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Foreign Policy Since Independence. New Perspectives on South-East Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05654-4_9
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