TOC | Introduction | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven | Twelve | Notes | Contributors

Private Peacemaking USIP-Assisted Peacemaking Projects of Nonprofit Organizations

Part V: Development for Peace

NGOs Creating a Foundation for Peace and Democracy in Bosnia-Hercegovina

by Max Primorac

Since the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords we have witnessed a frenzy of national and local elections in the successor states of the former Yugoslavia geared towards injecting a patina of democratic accountability into the policies and actions of those who rule. From the formerly Serb-held parts of Croatia across fractured Bosnia-Hercegovina to the truncated Yugoslavia of Serbia and Montenegro, free and fair elections, it is hoped, can set a new tone of political debate that, undergirded by massive economic assistance and the stabilizing presence of NATO forces, concentrates more on peaceful political reconciliation and national reconstruction.

     It is nevertheless understood that elections and top-down efforts to promote democratic change are in themselves insufficient and must be complemented by grassroots level democracy and peace-building. As one local businessman noted, “People in the region continue to suffer from a communist software in the brain.” This patrimony of political intolerance clearly reveals itself in the region’s undemocratic institutions, which tend to centralize power into a few hands and are viewed as normative instruments of political control. As a result, “democratic” elections can legitimize a winner-take-all approach to governance. In Bosnia-Hercegovina, where an obsession with political centralization is expressed along ethnic lines, elections can become a means not to reconcile differences but to solidify them.

     Given the ethnic politicization of Bosnia-Hercegovina, every issue and decision becomes trapped in the larger national arena of political rivalries, even in those places that can still boast a multi-ethnic community. At the local level this often translates into government inaction and gridlock where nonpolitical issues, such as fixing water lines and local economic development, are held hostage by larger, unrelated political battles.

     The international community indeed has labored to couple top-down democratic reform with substantial support to grassroots civic initiatives that can provide ways of getting around stultifying political divisions and meeting the numerous demands of physical and social reconstruction. These NGOs have become fora where citizens, regardless of their political, ethnic, or religious affiliation, can assemble and freely express their views and address community needs in an environment of cooperation. Though much of this activity has emerged spontaneously in Bosnia-Hercegovina, it has been stunted outside the more urban areas of Sarajevo, Tuzla, and Banja Luka. Yet it is in the provincial areas where tensions run highest, ethno-political divisions are deepest, and where peace and conflict hang in the balance.

     Historical political inertia and the utter absence of a civic culture, as well as the deep unhealed wounds and suspicions left behind by ethnic cleansing, have made it difficult for those within these critical communities to translate into action even the most sincere wishes to restore fragile social bonds. Though the need for supporting civic initiatives in these areas is clear, what is less clear is how to do it. The Center for Civil Society in Southeastern Europe’s USIP-sponsored effort over the past three years to create such initiatives in Livno and Travnik—two front-line communities which have maintained their multi-ethnic character, albeit under great stress—illustrates a workable approach.

• Sourcing from within the community. In establishing the Centers for Civic Cooperation we first sought to identify and work through legitimate community (civic and religious) leaders, those who command respect from all social sectors, including local governmental authorities. Forging links with recognized community leaders through their participation on each Center’s Advisory Board helped to allay suspicions that inexorably accompany any nongovernmental (seen initially as anti-governmental) initiative, especially if it is foreign-sponsored.

• Building cooperative relationships with local authorities. We also sought to avoid antagonizing local authorities, instead trying to provide them with opportunities to appreciate the important contributions that NGOs can make in a society. The Livno Center successfully collaborates with the municipality on a variety of projects, including the installation of central heating units at the local high school. Maintaining cordial relationships throughout the community permits the Centers to work actively with numerous local institutions and affords disenfranchised minorities the chance to influence these institutions. Center advisors are proving adept at ascertaining what local activities are realizable, while they also serve as trusted bridges between the Centers and otherwise skeptical and weary communities.

• Civic cooperation over ethnic reconciliation. Given the political resonances that attempts at interethnic reconciliation set off throughout the country, we found it wise to focus Center activities on meeting the concrete needs of the community as a whole and deliberately chose not to belabor its interethnic character. We counted on the interethnic staff and the specially designed administrative practices of the Centers to ensure that inter- and intra-ethnic reconciliation would be a natural by-product of the organization’s work. The Centers’ focus on community, not ethnic, needs, would gradually help to shift the local socio-political discourse away from strictly political and ethnic terms.

• Serving as a local civic structure for international assistance. A major obstacle to encouraging broad community participation in an NGO’s activities is overcoming the inertia that plagues communities habituated to a political system that demands obedience and discourages, even punishes, private initiative. The Centers’ ability to provide tangible assistance with people’s daily lives was critical if the Centers were to earn the trust of the community. Moreover, international agencies are given opportunities to channel their help in a way that can promote the development of local civic infrastructure and avoid the gridlock that often blocks implementation of their projects. Serving as local partners for international assistance and reconstruction projects can actually empower citizens to participate in the rebuilding of their community.

• Crucibles of civic education. Such initiatives as the Centers for Civic Cooperation in Livno and Travnik are living examples of the healthy balance that can exist between the state and individual citizens and how such nongovernmental initiatives need not be anti-governmental in nature. Civic participation through NGOs provides the vehicles through which concepts of civic responsibility can have concrete meaning for those struggling to rebuild civil society.

     Yet what will determine the success or failure of the Centers and other similar civic initiatives is how well these admittedly foreign plants can take root locally and grow into authentic indigenous institutions that desist from the sort of behavior and attitudes that lead to confrontation and exclusionism. In this regard, extensive training of Center staff has emphasized both interpersonal skills and a language of communication that is sorely absent in the region, as well as developing the administrative and programmatic skills needed to effectively manage civic organizations and tap into the good will and resources that exist within a community.

     Throughout Bosnia-Hercegovina, however, NGOs are having difficulty in weaning themselves from international support and focusing their attention less on pre-determined projects designed outside and more on locally designed projects that require little money, draw upon greater community participation, and find their logic within the community. For their part, international agencies have sometimes imposed their ideas on desperate NGOs through the allure of big projects, high salaries, and the prestige of association. In many cases, foreign-sponsored NGOs boast the highest paid staff in the area. And often, international agencies struggling to fulfill their mandates are too quick to fund unscrutinized civic initiatives. The example of the international funding of a newspaper started by war criminal General Ratko Mladic’s spokesperson only discredits other internationally sponsored peacemaking efforts. Together the wrong set of incentives are created, and the wrong message sent, to those engaging in civic initiatives, and it presents an image of NGOs as the extension of international interests and not as the basic medium for self-sustainable democratic development.

     Local NGOs must also avoid being pulled into national debates that really have little direct impact on encouraging broader, community-level participation in their work. They must avoid becoming branches of international agendas and truly reflect the needs of their specific communities. Both Centers find it difficult to refuse international aid that does not conform to their organizational mission. The example of Croatia’s Anti-War Campaign, which often rejects offers of generous foreign support if it fails to meet their very definite objectives, should be the model for Bosnia’s NGO community to follow. Unless the international community refocuses its energies on indigenizing the country’s many civic organizations, NGOs will fail to sustain themselves and fail to act as agents of positive change in a country remaining deeply polarized along political and ethnic lines.

TOC | Introduction | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven | Twelve | Notes | Contributors

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