Ashdown Moves to Abolish Defense Ministries and Police of Republica Srpska and Muslim Croat Bosnian Federation

Ashdown Moves to Abolish Defense Ministries and Police of Republica Srpska and Muslim Croat Bosnian Federation
Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily - January 18, 2005 Tuesday

From GIS Station Sarajevo. High Representative of the International Community in Bosnia-Herzegovina Paddy Ashdown was quoted in the January 15, 2005, edition of the Sarajevo-based daily Oslobodjenje that the defense ministries of the two states of the Bosnia & Herzegovina federal republic would have to be abolished, and that only a Federal Ministry of Defense -- which would essentially be dominated by the Bosnian Muslims -- would be allowed to remain. The move violates the 1995 Dayton Accords, which allowed the two constituent states to retain their armed forces and their ministries of defense.

He said, however, that according to his decisions, the entities' interior ministries and the (Bosnian) Serb Republic (RS) and Bosnian Federation armies did not have to be abolished. He said: "Once the parliaments approved for the army to come within the competence of the state, the entity ministries then became redundant. Moreover, the existence of entity defense ministries confuses the lines of command." He said that the "confused lines of command" would be eliminated with the abolishment of the entity defense ministries, in response to "the unconstitutional behavior of the RS Army which allowed (Hague fugitive) Ratko Mladic to stay in Han Pijesak".

Ashdown said that the entities' defense ministries had to be abolished by the second phase of the reforms, before Bosnia-Herzegovina could entertain full NATO membership. He added that the Defense Reform Commission could decide immediately to abolish the entity armies, but said that he was not requesting this. In reply to questions about the idea of demilitarizing Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ashdown reiterated that this was something on which the representatives of the three peoples of the federal republic -- Serbs, Muslims, and Croats -- would need to reach agreement. Demilitarization was not a condition for Partnership for Peace (PfP) and NATO entry.

Discussing police reforms, Ashdown said that the entity interior ministries did not have to be abolished, although the police forces had to be put under "state control"; in other words, the Dayton-guaranteed right to maintain law enforcement agencies was to be removed arbitrarily. Ashdown noted: "If they want, the entities could retain the interior ministries in order to organize the firefighting service or civil defense, but they cannot control the police."

Significantly, the Sarajevo-based federal policing structure had been essentially totally under the control of radical Islamists linked to the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) of the late Pres. Alija Izetbegovic, a close colleague and supporter of al-Qaida terrorist leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Ashdown's motivation for abolishing the Dayton-guaranteed defense and policing structures was stated as a response to the claim that RS had not captured former Bosnian Serb military leader Gen. Ratko Mladic, who remains a fugitive from the International Criminal Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague.

One senior US politician told GIS: "Ashdown is destroying an entire country -- not just Republica Srpska, but all of Bosnia-Herzegovina -- because he feels that his imperial authority has been insulted by the Bosnian Serbs' failure to capture Mladic. Ashdown will create such a black hole in the center of Europe that he will be responsible for bringing another major war to the Continent."

Commenting on the appointment of Pero Bukejlovic as RS Prime Minister-designate, Ashdown said that this was done by the local authorities without his interference, and that it was not important whether he approved of the government or not, but whether it was prepared to continue the reform process. Ashdown had on December 16, 2004, arbitrarily dismissed a new wave of RS officials; he had also dismissed some 60 RS officials in June 2004.

Significantly, NATO officials have repeatedly confirmed to GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs that the RS Police were "highly significant and helpful" in helping to track and curb the extensive terrorist training and planning operations in Bosnia, and the cross-border smuggling of weapons and narcotics in the region. Indeed, one source within NATO went so far as to say that "the only people who can benefit from the removal of the RS Police are the Islamist terrorists and their companion narco-traffickers; they've paid off so many people, and now they are seeing the reward for their pay-offs". The official would not say whether he thought Paddy Ashdown was among those officials who had benefited financially from the narco-trafficking payoffs.