BALKAN JOURNEY:Camp Butmir near Sarajevo airport is a vast, sprawling military base built by the Americans - and it's home to the 45 Irish personnel with the EUfor operation, writes Peter Murtagh
THE INTERNATIONAL community is heavily involved in parts of the Balkans trying to ensure, essentially, that what happened does not reoccur and that principles of democracy and accountability take root.
The Irish involvement is modest but not insignificant.
Camp Butmir near Sarajevo airport is a vast, sprawling military base built by the Americans. It is home to two missions: one run by Nato with the broad aim of modernising the Bosnian army and preparing it for membership of the alliance.
The other is the EU mission. It operates under a UN mandate and the umbrella of the EU security and defence policy. The Irish in Camp Butmir work with the EU mission, which is known as EUfor and has personnel from 22 EU member states and five non-EU countries.
There are about 2,500 troops and civilian personnel working with EUfor, with Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Poland and Hungary making the major contributions.
The total number of Irish is 45 but, not for the first time, the Irish seem to punch above their weight: most are involved at a senior level in the behind-the-scenes operational structures at Camp Butmir itself.
Separately, there are eight Irish military police working with EUfor. But the major off-base Irish activity is running three of four verification teams that monitor the large number of arms dumps scattered around Bosnia (the fourth is run by the Turkish contingent). The teams were created under the Dayton Accords that ended the war in 1995. The medium-term goal is to dispose of all the arms - by decommissioning them or selling them - within two to three years.
Butmir is a bit like a military UN: there is a riot of flags and emblems as each of the contributing nations make their presence felt. A variety of restaurants reflect the varying tastes of the contributing countries, most of which also have their own bars. Inside the Irish bar one night recently, portrait of Mary McAleese taking pride of place on the wall, several Irish military and non-military personnel, together with analysts from several other European countries, spoke of the difficulties they encounter.
"The biggest problem we face is the fragmented nature of government here," said one. "BiH has three levels of government and 10 cantons - each with ministers and the bureaucracy of government. There are something like 127 ministers."
And, they are all quick to point out, every one of them gets a car and an office and support staff and each guards their patch of political power jealously.
While Dayton ended the war, it didn't reform government structures and what the Bosnians (and the international community trying to help them) are left with is a sort of minestrone soup administration which consumes an astounding 67 per cent of the consolidated budget.
"So there's not much money left for social reforms," quips the political analyst.
"The political logic here is trench logic: it holds that if I can't have it, I will do everything to make sure the other side cannot have it," says another civilian analyst who works with the military.
"The main issue now," adds a colleague, "is to try to draw them away from thinking along ethnic lines but that's where their votes come from."
Dayton cemented a geographical carve-up of Bosnia creating three entities within a federal structure: the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and, under it, two separate but linked ethnic-based entities - the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (which is Muslim and Croat-based and has 10 cantons), and Republika Srspka, the Bosnia Serb homeland carved out in the war by Radovan Karadzic and Gen Ratko Mladic, using their own army in Bosnia as well as the former Yugoslav army which Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade turned, in effect, into the Serbian army.
There isn't much that unites all this: a common currency (the marka) and car number plates being the most visible examples. The EU checklist of reforms the union believes are necessary to cement democracy includes police and constitutional reform, reform of broadcasting and the financial system.
The incentive to act is money from Brussels.
"There's €400 million on the table now," says one EUfor officer, "and the politicians here regard it now as theirs, reform or no reforms. But if they don't follow through, if they try to take the money and do nothing, one day they will hit the wall. This has been explained to them ad nauseam but they just don't get it."
Back downtown at the old UN building, John Heelan, a Garda inspector from Co Limerick who has been seconded to the EU Police Mission, is under no illusions as to what he and his three colleagues, two sergeants and a garda, can, and cannot, achieve in Bosnia.
"They said before I came out here 'Don't try to change the world, just do what you can' and that's right. We're not here to tell them how to run their country, and shouldn't be. We're here to help them," says Heelan.
The EU police mission involves 170 police from the 27 EU member states and six other non-EU countries. The mission also has 35 international civilian experts and about 220 locally recruited staff.
The mandate of the mission is to help the Bosnian authorities achieve police restructuring, accountability and to combat organised crime. Bosnia has 15 different police forces and co-operation is, to put it mildly, less than perfect.
Added to that, there is a newly created prosecutorial system with 250 separate prosecutorial investigators reporting to different chains of command.
Heelan runs a team that visits Bosnian police stations to observe that proper procedures are being followed. Apart from Heelan and a garda working in HQ, a sergeant is a team leader in Pale, the Bosnian Serb town in the mountains above Sarajevo, and another sergeant in Bijelijna, in northeast Bosnia.
Heelan writes daily incident reports based on what is sent back to him and weekly overview reports. All the information is fed ultimately into the working of the office of the EU High Representative, Javier Solana.
"The Irish are perceived here," says Heelan, "as having a background without baggage and coming with an open attitude. We tend to get on well with our local counterparts. Our man in Pale, for instance, is dealing with both sides and gets on well with both."
He believes the presence of foreign police is welcomed by local people.
"When you meet people on the street, it gives them a sense of security that the international community cares and is here. If we weren't here, from what I've seen, I'd fear that what is just beneath the surface would re-emerge."
The EU police mission mandate runs out in 2009 but will almost certainly be renewed. A recent survey showed that between 70 per cent and 90 per cent of Bosnians had little or no confidence in their own authorities.
There's some way to go, it seems.
Balkan Bikers
Read Peter Murtagh's blog as he travels through the Balkans on a motorbike at irishtimes.com/blogs