Bosnia police reform: mission incomplete or mission impossible?

Overhauling Bosnia and Herzegovina's separate police forces

was always going to be a tricky task.

There were different police forces in the country's different entities,

with different religions and different pasts.

Most importantly, the police had played an integral role in the country's civil war.

At the end of the war, we had almost the entire male population under arms in this country,

a lot of them within the police structures.

And the police was in essence part of the armed forces.

Police forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina represent much more than in other Western countries.

They represent statehood. They represent an armed force.

And they represent of the country's most intractable problems.

Reforming Bosnia and Herzegovina's police forces was vital to secure

a multi-million Euro agreement, bringing the country closer to the EU,

the so-called EU Stabilisation and Association Agreement. That has now been signed.

We have been working with the Bosnian leaders for some time.

It has been a moment of difficulty but fortunately it has been overcome.

And today, we have that law passed and approved by the Parliament.

I feel that opens the way to keep on deepening the relationship

between Bosnia and Herzegovina and the European Union.

At first glance, the police seem to be doing a good job in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

I feel much safer in Bosnia any day than in many other more developed countries in the West.

Srecko Latal is a Bosnian journalist who covered the war in his own country and in others.

He's also worked as a communications expert for the World Bank and international think-tanks.

For six years, I was going to Washington.

And you know, people there know if you cross a certain invisible line wearing, posh Nike shoes,

you know, there is a very high probability that something bad will happen to you.

You can walk freely in the morning, in the evening in Sarajevo,

in Banja Luka, you know, in Foca, in Mostar, wherever.

Brigadier-General Vincenzo Coppola is the head of the European Union's police mission

in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In Europe proper, in the European Union proper,

I know hundreds of places which are far more dangerous than Sarajevo by far.

And the progress that they have made in reforms is not just limited to people's safety.

We had secret services that was divided between Serbs, Croats, Muslims,

each obviously spying on each other.

And we've now got secret services which actually work together.

But despite this progress, most observers do not see the police reform as a success.

What has happened in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in essence, this question has been put off.

And it has been put off until we have some sort of broader, perhaps constitutional, settlement

because so many of the issues relating to police force reform were also issues

which in essence related to constitutional matters.

So I think here these are long-term issues again related to ...

the structure of this particular country.

Police reform was seriously mishandled by the international community.

And it was one of the key elements

that enabled signing of the Stabilization and Association Agreement with the EU.

However, police reform basically stagnated ever since 2003-2004. And there was...

I mean the few laws that passed, that were passed by local parliaments

which was a condition for the SAA to be signed, more or less mean really nothing.

Sead Numanovic is the deputy editor of the Dnevni Avaz, a major Bosnian newspaper.

What we have now are the ruins of the ruins of the ruins of the original reform.

The reforms seemed to fall down more to what they symbolized than what they involved.

Paddy Ashdown, he's started this reform, explained the essence, the importance of it.

It is not about the police. It is about the statehood. Who has a police, it has a State.

I think police reform was conceptually flawed. I think a number of people felt ...

the police was a proxy for constitutional change, that if they...

for example Republic of Srpska agreed to transfer competencies for police

from the entity to the State

that somehow would undermine the existence of the entity itself.

So you've got a lot of resistance on that issue, not on the technical merits.

So we saw on police reform, I think, what we had experienced earlier in defence reform.

It's really a political issue. It's not a technical issue.

Even the most radical politicians in this country could not defend the fact

to have three armies... ethnically-based armies. This was undefendable.

But they had the very good reasons at least on paper to defend the fact

that every institution, entities, cantons, Brcko state could have had its own police.

Because this is an example in many other countries.

There's also been some questioning of both the choices made during the reform and its timing.

The reasons for the failure of this reform go back to 2002, 2003 and 2004.

Paddy Ashdown picked one of the three possibilities for police reform as proposed by EU itself,

and I mean, picked the most difficult one and said:

"Well, this will be the condition for the EU."

And ever since then, you know, that option was, even back then, rejected by Bosnian Serbs.

Police reform took very long, because we chose the wrong moment to propose the police reform.

Police reform was extremely ambitious as a project.

I don't say that it was not needed, but was extremely ambitious.

It was proposed at a time when there was not enough political agreement

among the political leaders, a real, strong, serious, solid political agreement.

So we've lost three years actually.

According to Sean Numanovic a full police reform was within touching distance

but slipped away on at least a couple of occasions.

There are two biggest mistakes made during that process.

One is made by Paddy Ashdown in Vlašic in June of 2005 when he was on the brink of the deal

and he let the Serbs go for some holiday. And when they came back they said:

"No, we're not going to sign it". And he admitted it. When we met recently, he said

the biggest mistake of his career in Bosnia was letting Serbs go on that day

because they were ready to sign the paper. The next biggest mistake was the one

that made by the Bosnian politicians on the March 13th 2006.

And the Bosniak politicians were opposing to it for one very stupid thing.

They said: "We cannot accept anything that consists with the Republic of Srpska name on it."

Looking back, what could have been done differently?

I would have seen a higher involvement of the State, state-level agencies,

ministry of security, SIPA, border police, into security operations.

I would have seen the entities to transfer some more competencies to the State,

entities and cantons to the State, so to have at least the major organized crime

and terrorist activities only in the hands of the State, which it's not.

And on top of these, we should have gone faster in a number of projects

like the police database, the police communication system, the interception system.

In terms of crime, the United Nations' report in June indicated

that these streets in Bosnia are safer than in most Western countries.

So what are the major security concerns of people here in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The most, the biggest problem that I see in Bosnia is not nationalism,

is not the separatist movements, but the corruption and the lack of rule of law.

The level of normal criminal activities is more than acceptable.

Organized crime here seems to be growing but I also have to say

that police institution have got a number of very good results in fighting organized crime.

Probably, we have to increase the capability of police and prosecutors to work as a system

if we want to achieve good results. Otherwise, the organized crime can grow out of control.

So this is for the time being our main problem.

But not everyone feels this is an issue

that is so important in day-to-day life in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

I'm not saying that there is no corruption. I'm not saying that there is no organized crime.

But my general impression is after so many years spent in the Bosnia, in the region

as well as witnessing what is happening in the rest of the world, you know,

I mean, I would say that basically we are talking about a storm in a tea cup.

Could some of these problems be linked to there being so many police in Bosnia and Herzegovina?

Police who earn just an average wage.

Police officers are not very well paid.

And this, sometimes, can lead also some cases of corruption

which is not common to everybody, but it's present.

We also have large numbers of police, just as we had very large armed forces.

This country is far more heavily policed than Western European countries are.

Even following the new reforms, Brigadier-General Coppola feels

there is still room for improvement in today's police forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The first problem that you have to solve is a good coordination of the police.

And the second problem is that they, of course, obey to a number of different laws.

But they do the same job.

So the other main aspect of our strategy is to harmonize the legislation

so that the different police forces will work according to the same kind of legislation.

Before they began, some sort of police reforms is a possible way

of bringing the country closer together or at least reducing its ethnic divides.

There is comprehensive legislation here

which would oblige the authorities to actually build in ethnic quotas within the police.

But this was never part of the plan, according to Brigadier-General Coppola.

Police reform was not... is not designed to bring the country together.

Police reform is designed to have a better security there,

that will mean that people will feel secure all over the place,

even those who will move from an area to another will feel more secure.

And these will certainly raise the confidence into the State as Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In 95, in 96, people even didn't even travel through Bosnia and Herzegovina.

There were checkpoints, you know, on every road, etc, etc.

So, I mean, there has been a dramatic change. However, we are stagnating now.

What is clear is that trust and belief in the police will play a key role

in Bosnians' confidence about the future of their country.

If you... if you're not a rich, or if you don't know someone to protect you, then you are lost.

If you... And most of the people are not in that position. So if most of the people are lost,

if then they don't have a trust in the institutions of the system,

they would start hating the country.

The people who hates the country works against it, and that country is doomed to fail.

If you have a justice system in place and a real justice system in place,

then everything is much easier.