Leadership Quote by Paddy Ashdown

Ashdown’s line is a diplomat’s scalpel: it separates “reconciliation” from “truth” to make a hard point sound achievable. In postwar Bosnia, reconciliation is the word everyone is supposed to applaud - a moral finish line that implies shared narratives, mutual forgiveness, a civic reset. Ashdown refuses the comforting timetable. “I don’t think Bosnia is ready” is less a pessimistic verdict than a warning about political theater: pushing reconciliation too early can become another form of coercion, a demand that victims and perpetrators perform unity for international cameras.

“Ready for truth,” though, is the pivot. Truth is narrower, procedural, and therefore politically useful: documents, testimony, mass grave exhumations, court records, names. Ashdown is quietly endorsing an institutional path (tribunals, commissions, archives, policing) over a sentimental one. He’s also signaling to nationalist elites that denial has an expiration date. You can stall empathy; you can’t forever outvote evidence.

The subtext is pragmatic and slightly accusatory: Bosnia’s problem isn’t only trauma, it’s managed amnesia. Truth becomes a prerequisite not because it magically heals, but because it limits the market for propaganda. Without a shared baseline of what happened, “reconciliation” turns into a rhetorical weapon - a way to demand silence, equivalence, or “moving on” while the same grievances are recycled for votes.

Ashdown, as High Representative-era international steward, is also justifying interventionist patience. He’s telling outsiders: stop measuring success by handshakes. Measure it by whether the country can face its own record without flinching.