The Foreign Service Journal, November 2005

and reservoir of ethnic tensions — as well as the continued presence of wartime mujahedeen and jihadist groups with links to al-Qaida and other extremist organizations — all make it an attractive base for terrorist activity. • A key lesson of 9/11 is that failed states matter, since they serve as host and vector not only for terrorist groups, but also for organized crime rings, drug traffickers and other non-state actors that threaten regional security. • Until Iraq, Bosnia was the largest post-Cold War military intervention of the United States and our most ambitious, complex peacekeeping and nationbuilding project. • Future interventions will also require an integrated approach to post-conflict reconstruction analo- gous to what eventually evolved in Bosnia. That will entail coordinating the various civilian and military agen- das within the U.S. government, as well as those of the many internation- al players involved. And such efforts will also require that America develop a civilian reconstruction and stabiliza- tion capacity that is the match of our military prowess. For all these reasons, we need to learn both from the failures and suc- cesses of Bosnia — in order to avoid past mistakes and to build on the best practices in the future. Some Key Lessons Haste makes waste. The Bosnian experience underscores the fact that peacemaking is a slow process that requires patience on the part of poli- cy-makers. In particular, it highlights the growing — and troubling — dis- connect between the duration of the warfighting phase and the length of the stabilization and reconstruction phase in modern peacekeeping oper- ations. While modern wars can fre- quently be measured in days and weeks, peace implementation and postwar reconstruction will always be a task that requires a sustained engagement measured in years, if not decades. This was particularly true because initial implementation efforts were slow to create a self-sustaining state and to bring about the conditions to allow the international community to end its massive involvement in almost every aspect of Bosnian political and economic life. In short, Dayton stopped the fighting, but left the country divided between two antago- nistic entities, with a weak central authority ill-equipped to provide basic governance or to meet other postwar challenges. Nothing happens without security. The military implementation under- scores the importance of deploying from the outset with an overwhelming force capable of creating a security environment that permits civilian reconstruction efforts to proceed with a robust mandate capable of com- pelling cooperation from all parties. NATO’s initial efforts were under- cut by a “mission creep” phobia (a misapplication of the lessons learned in Somalia) and a bias against expand- ing the roles and missions of military peacekeepers. The NATO-led Imple- mentation Force missed its chance to detain major war criminals in the immediate postwar period, allowing them to develop the underground political and financial networks that have helped them elude capture ever since. Arbitrary deadlines for the dur- ation for IFOR and successor Stabili- zation Force missions also tempted local spoilers to hunker down and wait out the departure of the foreign pres- ence rather than cooperate in imple- menting the peace. So one important lesson of Bosnia is that it is better to focus on an acceptable end-state than an end-date. Protect local infrastructure and vulnerable populations. Peacekeep- ers also initially did not extend their “safe and secure” mandate to cover refugees and internally displaced per- sons who sought to reclaim their prewar homes, allowing ethnic para- militaries to conduct campaigns to intimidate and terrorize returnees. In the immediate aftermath of Dayton, IFOR did not intervene to prevent Bosnian Serb hardliners from destroy- ing housing stock and infrastructure when they withdrew to the Serb side of the inter-entity boundary line. The price of inaction was high, in material reconstruction costs, lost credibility and lost time. But the military can’t do every- thing. Successful peace implementa- tion requires military forces and civil- ians to work in tandem. In the securi- ty arena, for example, civilian policing complements, rather than replaces, the need for a military peacekeeping presence. International and local police forces alone do not have the firepower to deal with insurgents, paramilitaries and other armed groups, but they play an essential role in restoring stability and the rule of law. In Bosnia, the deployment of the U.N.’s International Police Task Force helped immediately to raise local police standards, served as a deterrent to ethnic hate groups and organized crime, and provided reas- 52 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 5 The Dayton blueprint succeeded despite significant deficits in the areas of security, justice and reconciliation, and social and economic well-being.