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Chapter 11 bOsNIA-herZegOvINA: frOm three ArmIes tO ONe rohan maxwell The Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) declared its independence from a disintegrating Yugoslavia in April 1992, the third republic to do so and the one to suffer the most severe consequences. The population was almost entirely made up of three ethnic groups.1 About half were Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims); one-third were Bosnian Serbs (Orthodox Christian); and a little less than one-fifth were Bosnian Croats (Roman Catholic). In general, Bosniaks strongly supported independence from Serb-dominated Yugoslavia; Bosnian Serbs preferred to remain part of Yugoslavia, or at least to separate themselves from BiH; and Bosnian Croats vacillated between supporting independence and seeking their own separate part of BiH. A complex and vicious conflict consumed roughly 100,000 lives and displaced millions before the fighting ended in December 1995 with the signature of the General Framework Agreement for Peace (GFAP) and the establishment of a new State of BiH consisting of two largely autonomous entities. The Federation of BiH (FBiH) was almost entirely populated by Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats, who had begun the war as allies against Bosnian Serbs, then fought each other for a year, and then become uneasy allies again. The Serb Republic (Republika Srpska, or RS) was almost entirely populated by Bosnian Serbs. The new country was a complex creation dominated by mistrust among the entities and ethnic groups it contained. Under GFAP, the state possessed no armed forces, but the entities retained large, conscript-based armies: the Army of the FBiH (Vojska Federacije BiH, or VF), with well-separated Bosniak and Bosnian Croat components (based respectively on the wartime Armija Republike BiH, or ARBiH; and the Hrvatsko Vijece Obrane, or HVO); and the Army of RS (Vojska Republike Sprske, or VRS). GFAP established two international organizations to oversee the peace. The Office of the High Representative (OHR), headed by the high representative (HR), would be responsible for the civilian aspects of implementation; and the Implementation Force (subsequently the Stabilization Force, or SFOR), led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), would be responsible for military aspects. In 2001, BiH decided to seek membership in NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP), and in response NATO set out specific political and military requirements, including democratic, state-level parliamentary oversight of armed forces (North Atlantic Treaty Organization 2001). This provided a positive but limited impetus for BiH authorities to begin to address such issues. However, the trigger for the externally INterNAtIONAl INvOlvemeNt 180 driven, thirty-two-month process that replaced the entity armies with a single military force was a May 2003 decision by the HR that the lack of state-level command and control over the entity armies posed a threat to the civilian implementation of GFAP. Using his GFAP authority, he established the Defence Reform Commission (DRC) to develop recommendations and related legislation for the establishment of state-level command and control over the entity armies (OHR 2003). The DRC, which was made up of members and observers from the international community and BiH, was chaired by a former US assistant secretary of defense.2 He used intensive shuttle diplomacy to overcome the reluctance of BiH commissioners to engage in substantive work without clear guidance from the leaders (elected or otherwise) of their respective ethnic groups. Under this firm leadership, but using a consensus-based, inclusive approach, the DRC worked very quickly by BiH standards and submitted its recommendations and draft legislation in September 2003 (Bosnia and Herzegovina 2004). The inclusive approach paid dividends when key BiH political leaders supported the legislation (Haupt and Fitzgerald 2004). The new BiH Law on Defence entered into force in December 2003, placing the VF and VRS under a minimal, state-level command-and-control structure: the tripartite BiH presidency, as the commander in chief; a small Ministry of Defence (MoD); and the Joint Staff. This hybrid structure became the Armed Forces of BiH (AFBiH). The practical authority of the new state-level organizations was limited to coordination and setting standards, and even this was to prove problematic in implementation , particularly because the ethnically balanced triumvirates established at all senior civilian and military levels ensured that wider ethnic agendas and disputes would be reflected in the defense establishment. However, in line with the DRC’s recommendations, state-level parliamentary oversight was established by the creation of the Committee for Defence and Security in the BiH Parliamentary Assembly (Drewienkiewicz 2003; Haupt and Saracino 2005). With the new minister of defense...

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