Former UN High Representative in Bosnia Paddy Ashdown and American diplomat Richard Holbrooke wrote this column last week warning of an impending crisis in the region and asserting that the Dayton Agreement, which has crafted an uneasy and separate peace which has lasted more than a decade now in Bosnia, is on the rocks. Niheer Dasandi argues the piece is alarmist. Meanwhile, German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung says foreign peacekeepers are still necessary in Bosnia. The EU and NATO have expressed concern.
I spent a lot of 2007 in Sarajevo, though not doing the kind of work which would give me any special insight into the motivations of the primary players – Bosnian President Haris Silajdzic or Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodic. Accordingly, I’m reluctant to take sides too much.
There are things you learn living somewhere, though, mostly by interacting with folks on the ground. The lessons I learned indicate that Ashdown, Holbrooke, and Dasandi all have a part of the picture right – and very strongly indicate that Jung is right and anybody who disagrees with him that peacekeepers are necessary is not that concerned with the best interests of Bosnians.
The first thing that's essential to understand is that a war in Bosnia which occurred 15 years ago occurred a long time ago in Pittsburgh. It occurred almost no time ago in Bosnia, because everyone over 20 in the country and some of the younger folks remembers the war, and everyone remembers vividly what happened to their family or friends as a result of it. It is too simplistic to say that this is a region where history matters, where that war was set in motion by a speech about another battle – a battle which took place in 1389. It's true, but not the whole story; anybody, in any region, would remember their home being shelled or their city besieged ten years after the fact. Anybody would view their surroundings through that prism. It's not a Balkan quirk, and when people dismiss it as one it's a way of tolerating continued instability in the region.
The fact that the war feels recent in Bosnia has two important corollaries: first, people are still dealing with the trauma of losing homes, friends, and loved ones, so they’re sensitive to certain types of reminders. Those reminders, to other groups, can be sources of pride; Croatia's red checkerboard flag, first brought to 20th-century prominence by the pro-Nazi Ustasha during World War Two and brought back by Franjo Tudjman, the first President of an independent Croatia, is a source of pride to Croatians but makes some Serbs and Bosniaks nervous. Second and maybe more importantly, because the war feels fresh, people believe it could happen again; I’d been in Sarajevo for about a day the first time a local told me that if EU-For left, conflict would start again. My second month there, my landlady told me she felt like it was 1991. The point isn't whether these people were right or wrong; neither were government officials or radicals. The point is that when people think a situation is teetering on the edge, it's much easier for the situation to escalate rapidly and much easier for radicals to convince people drastic solutions are necessary. Mines scattered around rural areas of the country, “Sarajevo roses,” and buildings which still show damage from decade-old artillery fire don't help. The struggling official economy and thriving black market don't either.
This is all important because while Sarajevo, Belgrade, Moscow, Brussels, and Washington each drive events in the region to some extent, they will not drive a conflict. If conflict flares up it's very unlikely to be started by an army – it's likely to start because radicals on one side convinced a bunch of their compatriots to start a fight, radicals on another side convinced their neighbors to retaliate, and things escalated from there.
And Bosnia is not taking major steps to diminish tensions by integrating communities. Education and politics are both segregated, so children don't necessarily make friends outside their ethnic group and no politician has to balance the aspirations of Muslims, Serbs and Croats or develop credibility with more than one group, which is why the Republika Srpska has as its president a man most Bosniaks believe is a war criminal and many Serbs believe the same about Bosniak leaders. (The communities also live basically apart; Sarajevo and Tuszla are integrated to some extent, but neighborhoods are heavily ethnically segregated).
That said – the story of post-war Bosnia is a story, in significant part, of people making good decisions under difficult circumstances. Karadzic's arrest, Kosovo's declaration of independence, little cultural conflicts like an Ustasha singer appearing in Sarajevo – lots of things could cause a few people who’ve suffered and are nervous as a result to give a friendly ear to radicals, and a couple ethnic riots could spiral out of control rapidly. That it hasn't yet is a testament to Bosnians of all ethnicities, and to the American and European peacekeepers in Sarajevo. We ought to be inspired by Bosnia's ability to live in peace and the success of its unique hybrid court in handling controversial war crimes cases. We simply need to be aware of the structural dangers facing the country and its people and work diligently to minimize those dangers.
