The Foreign Service Journal, November 2005

surance for minority returns in many front-line areas. A corollary to this lesson is that if we want others to underwrite a major share of postwar reconstruction costs — as we suc- ceeded in doing in Bosnia — we must be willing to cede some decision-mak- ing authority to others. Start with an implementation plan that gets the sequence and priorities right. Unless all components of a bro- ken system are fixed, repairing isolat- ed parts does little good. The Bosnian experience was characterized by a myriad of U.S. agencies, international organizations and assistance agencies, bilateral players, NGOs and other entities, all operating without a single shared vision of the end-state and end-institutions that we were building toward. Without overall coordination, lack of progress in one area frequent- ly became a drag on others. For example, the absence of the rule of law and the lack of judicial reforms hampered economic growth and secu- rity. The vetting, training and recerti- fication of police forces occurred with- out corresponding reforms in the prosecutorial and judicial system. Getting the sequence and priorities right is helped by having a detailed plan that identifies priorities, aligns objectives with budgets, establishes meaningful metrics for progress, and sets the stage for an exit strategy. Too much assistance can hinder, not help, reform. The boom-bust dynamic of postwar assistance flows was also problematic. Money was wasted because of Bosnia’s limited absorptive capacity. Some assistance shielded dysfunctional communist- era economic institutions and prac- tices from market forces. Other assis- tance was looted by corrupt officials. Only after the rule of law is estab- lished and the business environment put on a sound footing should the spigots be turned on for economic development initiatives. Create a coalition of the compe- tent, not just the willing. Just as too much assistance at the wrong time can be counterproductive, the wrong mix of implementers can hinder progress. While soldiers, diplomats, international civil servants and other generalists are important, it is critical to enlist teams and individuals with specific competencies, including cen- tral bankers, financial examiners and forensic auditors, legal experts, prose- cutors, engineers and specialists who can focus on key industrial and public sectors such as power generation, transportation, and rehabilitation and privatization of state-owned enter- prises. They will provide the best pos- sible on-the-ground situational aware- ness of the economic and social envi- ronment available, and can help get the information base right from the beginning. These experts need to be assigned on a long-term basis, work- ing alongside local staff to facilitate capacity-building. They must begin the process of handing over responsi- bilities to local staff at an early stage. Don’t fight the learning curve. A related problem in Bosnia was rapid staff turnover and the concomitant loss of institutional knowledge, result- ing in reforms moving on a stop-and- go basis. One exception was the Bosnian Central Bank, led from the start by expatriate staff working along- side local experts. As one banker there told me, “The first year was hell, the second year was purgatory, and then it got better.” Constantly cycling new personnel through an interven- tion means that the international community will be condemned to the eternal purgatory of the bottom of the learning curve. Avoid enshrining special ethnic rights. As in Iraq and Afghanistan, the reconstruction effort in Bosnia had to traverse a minefield of compet- ing ethnic interests. A side effect of the compromises necessary to get to Dayton was favoring ethnic commu- nity rights over individual rights. These included quotas on govern- ment positions, a tripartite presiden- cy, upper houses of parliament based on ethnicity, and other institutions that conferred special status on the three “constitutent peoples” of Bosnia. This has given ethnic groups the institutional levers to block progress and has imparted a zero-sum ethnic dynamic to almost every major political issue. Perhaps a better approach might have been to create a civil system and constitutional guaran- tees that emphasized individual rights, and which were consonant from the outset with international human rights norms. Harness local aspirations to join international society and apply objective international standards. Eight years after Dayton, the interna- tional community fixed what Ambass- ador Holbrooke acknowledged was the agreement’s greatest failure: the lack of central command and control over Bosnia’s rival entity militaries. These reforms were launched in the wake of the “Orao” (Eagle) scandal in 2002, which revealed that Bosnian Serb officials had engaged in illegal arms deals with Saddam Hussein’s regime. The international communi- N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 53 While modern wars can frequently be measured in days and weeks, peace implementation and postwar reconstruction require years, if not decades.