Chapter 3: Regional stability
22.Witnesses were concerned about stability in the region. The Government’s aim, in the light of the region’s “fragile stability”, was to “help the Western Balkans become a more stable and resilient region”.26 Professor James Ker-Lindsay described the Western Balkans as “a source of instability within Europe”.27 General Sir Michael Rose thought Bosnia and Herzegovina “at risk of being a failed state”.28 Though many agreed that the Dayton Peace Agreement had been “a superb agreement to end a war but a very bad agreement to make a state”29 and had not left the country with a properly functioning constitution,30 the prospect of it becoming a failed state was strongly rejected by those we met in the region.31
23.Much of this instability is a legacy of the disintegration of the Yugoslav state and the wars that accompanied it in the 1990s. Dr Denisa Kostovicova, LSE, described the region as having an inherently unstable “peace without reconciliation” where “there is no consensus on the causes and nature of violence committed in the conflicts of Yugoslavia’s dissolution in the 1990s. Also, all ethnic groups still tend to see themselves primarily as victims and not as perpetrators of violence.”32 Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon said that the Western Balkans was typical of places with “unfinished wars” where “the nomenklatura who run the war immediately translate themselves into the running the political situation afterwards, and they do not change the aims of the war; they simply pursue them through the means of politics.”33
24.Part of this legacy are state boundaries, recognised by the UN and others,34 which encompass communities with ethnic or cultural backgrounds more closely aligned with neighbouring countries. For example, almost 20% of Serbs in the Western Balkans live outside Serbia and around 48% of Albanians in the Western Balkans live outside Albania (see Table 1).
Table 1: Ethnic makeup of Western Balkan countries
Ethnicity |
Total population in the Western Balkans |
% in principal country |
% elsewhere in the Western Balkans |
|
Albanian |
4,808,462 |
52% (in Albania) |
47.6% (mainly in Kosovo and Macedonia) |
|
Bosniak |
2,160,393 |
89% (in Bosnia and Herzegovina) |
10.5% (mainly in Serbia) |
|
Macedonian |
1,350,589 |
100% (in Macedonia) |
0 |
|
Montenegrin |
289,148 |
100% (in Montenegro) |
0 |
|
Serb |
7,361,895 |
80% (in Serbia) |
19.5% (mainly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo) |
Source: Figures derived from CIA, World Factbook Library 2017: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/ [accessed 21 December 2017]
25.Timothy Less, Nova Europa, said that this was “the fundamental structural defect in the region: the mismatch of political and ethnic boundaries.”35
26.Because of these cross-border connections, a number of witnesses told us that stability in the Western Balkans had to be viewed on a regional basis. For example, Behar Sadriu, SOAS, saw the Serbia–Kosovo question as a risk to the whole region. The longer it remained unresolved, the greater the risk of border issues in the region re-opening: “This would have significant impact on, to begin with, Bosnia but also FYROM (Macedonia) and eventually—as in the 1990s—farther afield.”36
27.Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon considered Bosnia and Herzegovina as a similar risk to the region: “if Bosnia goes bad, the rest of the Balkans goes bad.”37 Any approach therefore had to be regional.
28.Some witnesses saw signs that the region was moving on from the instability of the past. The fall of the previous government in Macedonia and its replacement through elections (see Appendix 4) was referred to by Peter van der Auweraert, IOM:
“In Macedonia, for example, while there was political instability for a certain period of time, there is now something like a Macedonian spring, whereby through democratic and electoral means a change of Government has led to increased political stability for the moment.”38
29.The UK has an interest in encouraging regional stability. General Sir Michael Rose said that “some 72 Britons, mainly soldiers, have died in the western Balkans since the early 1990s, so we have a great interest in making sure that their lives were not sacrificed for nothing.”39 Andreja Bogdanovski, Security Analyst, said that any deterioration of peace across the region could “heavily harm the UK’s interests in the short and long term … There is also of course the potential impact on UK business and other investment across the Western Balkans.”40
30.The region still suffers from the legacy of the wars of the 1990s. Some political leaders are pursuing the aims of those wars by different, political and diplomatic, means including calls for redrawing national borders and secessionism. Any such act would be regressive, dangerous and destabilising for the region. Progress cannot be taken for granted. Without sustained, co-ordinated and consistent engagement from the region’s international partners there is a risk of the progress made in the region towards establishing functioning democracies and the rule of law stagnating or going into reverse. Such engagement must take a regional view. We therefore welcome the Government’s decision to host the Western Balkans Summit in 2018.
31.We would urge the Government to use the occasion of the Western Balkans Summit to set out in detail, and for a substantial period ahead, the contribution that Britain is prepared to make, in partnership with the EU, to support stability, democracy, the rule of law and prosperity in the Western Balkans. This initiative, coming at an important stage of the Brexit negotiations, would demonstrate that the Government is indeed not leaving Europe when it leaves the EU.
30 See Appendix 4 for more detail.
31 See Appendix 6
34 Though Kosovo remains unrecognised by many countries. See Appendix 4 for more detail.