Sligo Garda sees cause for hope in Bosnia

BOSNIA: As the EU takes over peacekeeping in Bosnia today, the head of police reform tells Dan McLaughlin , in Sarajevo, about…

BOSNIA: As the EU takes over peacekeeping in Bosnia today, the head of police reform tells Dan McLaughlin, in Sarajevo, about the challenges ahead

When the European Union takes over NATO's peacekeeping duties in Bosnia today, its troops will find a nation that has made enormous strides in nine years of peace, according to the Irishman who runs the EU Police Mission in the Balkan state.

Mr Kevin Carty is in charge of about 900 people at his base in Sarajevo, the bustling, mostly Muslim city that has been his home since March, when he left his post as Assistant Commissioner for the Dublin Metropolitan area.

With a mandate to help restructure a Bosnian police force that is fractured along ethnic lines, is poorly-funded and has failed dismally to combat organised crime or catch war crimes suspects, Mr Carty faces a huge challenge.

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But, as he says, EU peacekeepers will discover there is also much cause for hope, less than a decade after bitter ethnic fighting killed over 250,000 people.

"We are only nine years out of a war when one-sixteenth of the population was killed, 10,000 in Sarajevo alone. When 2,500 kids were killed on their way to or from school by snipers and rocket attacks," Mr Carty told The Irish Times.

"Now, the European Union considers Bosnia a potential member, we are restructuring the police, have one army and a reformed tax system. People aren't killing each other and people are coming back, because they feel safe."

Mr Carty (54), from Ballymote, Co Sligo, joined the Garda at the age of 19, and went on to serve in its Special Detective Unit and lead the National Drugs Unit. He was also assistant commissioner in charge of the Northern Region until 2002, when he took over in Dublin.

He jumped at the chance to work in Sarajevo, which he calls a "wonderful, safe city", but he does not play down the task he faces in reforming Bosnia's law enforcers.

"At the state level the system is totally dysfunctional," he says, of a country whose Serb, Croat and Muslim officials frequently refuse to co-operate. Often prickly relations with neighbouring Serbia-Montenegro also hamper crime fighting.

"There is practically no sharing of intelligence information. That makes addressing organised crime so hard, because it transcends local and international boundaries, while police co-operation doesn't." And Bosnia is the suspected home to some high-profile criminals.

The international community's High Representative for Bosnia, Mr Paddy Ashdown, sacked 59 government officials earlier this year for obstructing the capture of war crimes suspects, including wartime Bosnian Serb leader Mr Radovan Karadzic.

He and his military ally, Gen Ratko Mladic, are believed to spend at least some of their time on Bosnian Serb territory, probably in the remote, mountainous region bordering Serbia-Montenegro, where they are widely regarded as national heroes.

"Those who are now most wanted, like Karadzic and Mladic, were formerly the most senior people and they still wield lots of political power in Republika Srpska," Mr Carty says, referring to the Serb-run section of Bosnia. "The police on the ground need to be confident that they have a political endorsement to act against these people, so a big change of mindset is needed." Police methods also have to change.

"Intelligence isn't good enough, and operations are cumbersome. They'll mobilise 300 people to surround a village to catch one person. In modern policing you'd look at having a team of 10-12 people hit a house fast, in and out." Such overblown operations cannot fail to alert suspects - through their loyal networks of scouts and contacts - to an impending police strike, Mr Carty says.

He hopes many of these problems will be addressed by the State Investigation and Protection Agency, a department he is helping establish and which he says "desperately needs to work if we are serious about policing here." It will have responsibility for trying to arrest war crimes suspects and tackling their allies in organised crime, who make fortunes trafficking drugs, arms, stolen cars and even people through Bosnia and on towards the West.

It will also have to work closely with the EU's new 7,000-strong peacekeeping force, if the likes of Mladic and Karadzic are to end up in custody, and lend a massive boost to Bosnia's bid for eventual membership of NATO and the EU.

With about two-thirds of the EU force made up of NATO peacekeepers currently in place, Mr Carty sees few problems in today's handover of security duties. "It has to work - the EU can't come down here talking about coherence and accountability if we can't be coherent ourselves. We have to put forward a united front. The situation here isn't perfect but, by God, there's been a hell of a lot of progress, and there's no reason why it won't continue. I see no appetite for going back to war."