War by Other Means : How Bosnia's Clandestine Political Economies Obstruct Peace and State Building
In: Problems of post-communism, Band 51, Heft 3, S. 27-34
ISSN: 1557-783X
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In: Problems of post-communism, Band 51, Heft 3, S. 27-34
ISSN: 1557-783X
In: Problems of post-communism, Band 51, Heft 3, S. 27-34
ISSN: 1075-8216
An examination of the negative impact of clandestine political economics on postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina shows how black-market control enabled the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) & the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) to maintain power & continue to obstruct the constitutional order implemented by the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement. The financial revenues of criminal networks obtained from tax fraud, money laundering, & other illegal schemes have been diverted from smuggling weapons & providing paramilitary forces to preventing political reform. In 1997, attempts by the president of the ruling Republika Srpska Party to attack corruption in the government, especially customs service, were thwarted by a resilient clandestine political economy that supported Radovan Karadzic, the principal architect of the Bosnian-Serb ethnic cleansing program during the war. The seizure of Hercegovacka Banka is described as another example of the detrimental effects of a clandestine political economy. The future political outlook & prospects for reducing the impact of clandestine economies & bolstering the peace-building project are discussed. J. Lindroth