Interview: Paddy Ashdown

Lord Ashdown, when you were in Bosnia you put in a lot of time and effort into tackling areas

such as corruption, unifying or standardizing structures, and clarifying messages

What are the experiences and the lessons that you learnt there

that you feel are most appropriate to the Balkans today?

I think that in the Balkans we're not any longer dealing with peace stabilization.

That era's over; the first 10 years, the years of Dayton, I suppose,

were about stabilizing the peace, and by the way we did that extraordinarily successfully.

I mean we did all the right things. We had enough troops, 60,000.

We managed to overwhelmingly dominate the security space.

We prevented the country returning to war.

An amazing achievement if you consider the war that Bosnia went through

with half the population driven from their homes, 250,000 perhaps killed.

We NATO created the circumstances in which a million refugees returned home.

The first time ever after war that refugees have been able to repossess their houses.

So that stage was highly successful.

I came in at the end of the era of Dayton, the era of stabilization

and the beginning of the era of Brussels.

And the European Union is not just a union of ideas,

it's also a union of values, it's a union of structures.

It's a union which creates the institutions of a modern state.

That not only was not done and had not been tackled, but actually Dayton,

which had been an immense help in the stabilization phase, became an impediment ...

... because it locked into concrete, the structures of a fractured country,

I mean 10 prime ministers, 10 ministers of the interior and so on.

So my task was to begin to create a functional, if highly decentralized state.

And what does that mean?

It means having the institutions, a taxation institution, VAT in our case,

brought it in faster than any other country, let alone with the fractious nature of Bosnia.

The institutions of proper courts, proper judges, proper body of law,

the institution for clean, political space, that was my task.

I began it and we succeeded in some areas.

We combined three intelligence services into one under the control of Parliament.

We combined the two armies into one under the control of the state.

We combined the taxation systems into a single VAT system.

We created a Bosnia with a single judicial structure covering the whole country.

But there are many areas still to be completed,

and I have to say that the progress afterwards, the progress in the last let's say two years

has been one I think of regression rather than progress.

In your book you describe the opportunities presented by a golden hour after a major victory.

Do you think that Kosovo, with its declaration of independence and its new constitution,

is in a golden hour now?

Not in the same way, no. I mean the golden hour that I describe

is the golden hour at the start of the peace stabilization phase.

As you move down the track and start to build political institutions, that moment has passed.

The golden hour is your troops have occupied, as in the case of Kosovo.

You are now in charge whether you like it or not.

What do you have to do? You must not lose that golden hour

to do the first thing that needs to be done which is to establish security.

The success of NATO in Bosnia and in Kosovo was, pretty conclusively, not without some fault,

but pretty conclusively to establish the security envelope

and to begin to build the institutions that would establish the rule of law.

The failure of Iraq was the failure to establish that security envelope in the early hours,

the early days, the early weeks and months after the war had been won.

Kosovo's well past that. It's now going through the rather more difficult

and very long and torturous process of trying to build the institutions of a state.

What is more important in the Balkans: transparent democracy or sustainable stability?

I don't think we're in the stability phase. I think that's over.

I mean no one in the Balkans are talking about returning to war.

If there's a threat to the security situation in the Balkans today,

it doesn't lie from either the possibility of aggression,

one side and the other, Serbs versus Croats versus Muslims, Bosniacs.

That is gone, and no one's talking about that

because it's almost, almost inconceivable that that could return.

If there's a threat to security, it actually comes from endemic crime

and corruption at the highest levels.

It's a rule of law issue rather than a stability issue. So I think we're well past that point.

Could the Balkans return to war? Well, you never say never,

but it's inconceivable in the near time.

Could the Balkans simply fail to continue to make progress and descend into a black hole,

let's remember now inside Europe a black hole of criminality

and un-governability, now that is a real threat,

and I have to say looking at Bosnia probably, Serbia absolutely certainly, it seems to me ...

that in terms of being a black hole of un-governability,

recent years and months have marked a deterioration rather than an improvement.

Do you think that the Balkanization of the Balkans has stopped with Kosovo?

Well I'm confident we should resist the process. I think I'm confident it's over.

The truth is that it's a tough way to put it, but the last price that Serbia had to pay

for the follies and brutality of Milosevic was Kosovo.

Could you see a further Balkanization of the Balkans? I don't think you could.

The only thing I think that would bring the Balkans back to war would be,

for instance, if you would hand the Republika Srpska over to Serbia.

What are you going to do with the Muslim majorities that have now come back into Srebrenica?

That Golgotha which now has Muslims living back in it?

Kozarac which was the place where the old death camps were.

has now got a Muslim majority and lets Muslim councils

What are you going to do with Brcko

which is inconveniently perhaps for some who like to see this done, perched...

and by the way the most effective operating multi-ethnic institution in Bosnia is Brcko,

and it's in between the Republika Srpska and Croatia.

So it is impossible to do, and I'm very certain that we should be wrong to do it.

It is the one thing I think that could bring the Balkans back to war.

So I'm very clear that we should absolutely resist any further process of Balkanization.

Kosovo was the exception. It was the price that had to be paid for the follies of Milosevic.

But I think the Serbs should realize, Belgrade should realize

that it is the last price that we have to pay for the stupidities of that terrible regime.

Do you think that NATO and EU membership can provide a panacea for the Balkans?

Look, I think they can provide the only destination which provides an overarching structure

within which you can exercise the leverage, to build the institutions of a European state.

The one thing that united everybody, irrespective of ethnicity, or political party in Bosnia

that I was able to use was the prospect of becoming Europe, joining Europe.

And the truth is that that did far more, the magnetic pull of Brussels, to encourage

and act as a lever for the reform of institutions than ever the push and pull

and stick and scourge of the High Representative's Bonn powers

All those big things that were done were done because

they were necessary to get into NATO, to get into Europe.

And I think that magnetic pull is absolutely essential for the Balkans.

Now if I have a worry, to be honest, it is that viewed from the Balkans,

and most people in the Balkans understand this,

that magnetic pull has very significantly weakened in the last two or three years

And the consequence is that the drawing power, the leverage power, of Europe

to do the things that are necessary is significantly diminished in the Balkans

because many in the Balkans don't believe it any longer.

They don't believe that Europe wants to have them.

Now Croatia I think will act in the opposite direction,

but one of the most destabilizing factors in the Balkans at present

is the weakening, the evident weakening of the magnetic pull of Brussels

and the evident lack of enthusiasm shown by many European capitals

that they're serious about having the Balkans join the European Union.

For as long as that continues, our capacity to reform the Balkans

will be significantly diminished, and by the way we pay the price.

This is not a faraway country as somebody once said of which we need know little

This is absolutely central. The Balkans are the frontline against crime in our inner cities

and if you leave that as a black hole then... you know, they pay a price, a very heavy price,

but we pay one too, and we oughtn't to forget that there's self-interest now involved in this

Do you feel that the Balkans has reached the stage now

that it has the same problems as any other normal European country?

No. Long way to go yet.

But I mean we oughtn't to forget it takes a long time to unstitch the enmities of war.

We forget sometimes how long it takes.

It took 200 years to unstitch the enmities of the English civil war

If you think about American politics today, the reverberations the American Civil War,

150 years later are still very clearly evident.

You can't wipe out the enmities of 10 years

of terrible bloody destruction in the Balkans in a matter of weeks.

So, of course, in a matter of a handful of years, of course this is going to take time,

but what I'm very clear about is that the Balkans are now making progress,

albeit more slowly than I would wish, and sometimes haltingly towards that end.

But that is the only future for them,

and that it's in Europe's interest to make sure that they complete that journey.

Now there are some, foolish in my view, forces, some too close to the top in Belgrade

who somehow believe that Moscow offers an alternative to Brussels.

They're fools, in my view, to try and pretend to their own population

that that provides an alternative. Will Moscow put into the reconstruction of Serbia,

the kind of sums of money that Brussels has already committed and will go on committing?

No, of course they won't. Nothing like it.

Will Moscow abandon Belgrade when it's in their interest to do so

as they did before in the time of Milosevic and Primakoff? Probably.

Just do this little calculation.

Go down to any European embassy of a Thursday evening in Belgrade: Austria, Germany,

Britain, France. Find out how many people are queuing outside to get a visa to go to Europe.

Now go to the Russian embassy and see how many want to go to Moscow: you've got your answer.

The truth is that those who would wish to pretend that Serbia

can have an alternative destination other than being part of the European Union

by becoming part of the zone of influence of Russia, are, in my view, not only wrong,

but tragically wrong in terms of what they're saying to the people of Serbia.

Why do you think Ratko Mladic and Karadzic weren't captured and arrested?

There's a very simple answer that we love to flagellate ourselves and say it's all our fault.

Well, the truth is that we have the most powerful army in the place, and we should be breaking

every bone and every sinew of our own to make sure that we complete this task.

But we can't complete it without the assistance of the locals.

The big thing is in my time... There were all sorts of talks about what happened beforehand.

Did Holbrooke make a deal with Karadzic? I don't know. Holbrooke has said no to me.

Was there a deal with the French because they didn't want Karadzic to come to power

because something happened over the time of General Janvier in Srebrenica?

I don't know; I've heard the rumours

When I was there, NATO, across the whole range of the NATO countries

was fully committed and provided the resources to find Karadzic and Mladic.

The thing that was lacking was not NATO effort or intention; it was Serb cooperation.

And the truth is that for as long as Banja Luka failed to cooperate adequately,

and Belgrade failed to cooperate adequately, this was almost never likely to be done.

And so I think instead of pointing the finger at ourselves;

I don't say we're flawless, and saying why were we at fault here? Why did we not catch him?

We ought to make sure that the people who are in the frame for this

are the people who should be in the frame,

and it is the failures initially of Banja Luka, and I have to say probably more recently too,

that we managed to break that when I was there, but it took some tough politics to do it,

and I think the failures of Belgrade.

I mean my judgment that if Belgrade wanted to send Mladic to The Hague, they could do so.

I suspect he's being protected by the renegade elements of the Serb Security Forces.

I don't say under the control of Belgrade, but Belgrade could stop it

And if the Serb Orthodox Church wanted to make sure that Karadzic was in the Hague,

they could do so ... And so those are the people we need to put under the pressure here.

And if I have a sadness it is the fact that for reasons I find very difficult to comprehend

both Europe and NATO, to my great regret

have released the pressure on Serbia and Serbian institutions and on Banja Luka

to fulfil their international commitments and to The Hague Tribunal.

And in consequence I suspect that Karadzic and Mladic today are further away

from facing justice at The Hague than they've been since the end of the war.

And to what do you attribute the relaxing of pressure?

I have to be pretty blunt here. There has been a series of rather unfortunate miscalculations

on the part of some of the Western nations, and Brussels is not immune from it.

In being so obsessed with the rather smaller and temporal issue of Kosovo,

that they believe the right thing to do would be to appease forces in Serbia

in order to diminish the situation in Kosovo.

Kosovo's not the long-term problem. In five or 10 years, Kosovo will be a funny little enclave

and we'll remember it much as we did Schleswig-Holstein in the 19th Century.

The truth is that it was difficult in short and it was sharp,

but there was only one solution and there's only one outcome.

The real difficult problem is not Kosovo.

The real difficult problem is how do we prevent Serbia and how do we prevent Bosnia

descending into the dark black hole of un-governability and corruption?

And we should not have relinquished this pressure

To my sadness for the last year the wider policy of the Balkans

has been run as a subset of the Kosovo policy,

and we've done anything to keep things quiet elsewhere while we dealt with Kosovo.

A miscalculation in my view.

The result has been not as many hoped and said,

the strengthening of the moderate forces in Serbia

it has been rather, as is always the case when you appease,

the strengthening of the radical forces in Serbia.

So I'm afraid I think that policy has been wrong, and I regret that it hasn't been changed.

Does the term the Balkans mean anything except in a geographical sense anymore?

Well it does in the same way as Western Europe does.

You know, it does in the same way as you talk about the Gallic nations does.

It is a useful piece of shorthand, not least because many of these problems are similar.

It may be that there are disparate rates of improvement of amelioration,

in Croatia for instance, and Albania.

But I think it is important because it's a way of talking about a region

which in a Europe of the regions is itself important.

But I think it's important for another reason which is even more powerful

which is if there is one thing that Europe has done wrong in the Balkans,

I would say what it's done wrong is treating each of the countries in the Balkans

as penny-packet problems. You have a Bosnia policy, you have a Croatian policy,

you have a Serbian, but you have a Kosovo, you have Macedonia.

We shouldn't be; we should be having a regional approach to this,

and only if you see the thing as a region can you begin to create the regional policy

within which all the other problems become much more soluble.

Now frankly the Balkans is too wide a phrase because of course that includes

Romania, Bulgaria, it includes Greece, so I think I prefer the Western Balkans.

But it's an important piece of nomenclature, if only because it should be saying to Europe

you should have a policy for the whole of the Western Balkans, not penny-packet policies

Thank you very much talking to NATO Review.

Great pleasure.