I’ve written before about concerns surrounding Bosnian political stability. Within the international community, the chorus of worried voices is getting louder. Thomas Barnett argues the risk of further dissolution is endemic to the creation of a new nation. Stop Genocide blog, however, notes this piece by Morton Abramowicz and Daniel Serwer, arguing that Bosnia and Kosovo are at risk of sliding back towards instability while the international community's attention is focused elsewhere.
Abramowicz and Serwer lay considerable blame for what they perceive as the current peril at the doorstep of the relatively pro-Western Serbian government, noting the Tadic government has not turned over ICTY indictee Ratko Mladic to stand trial and northern Kosovo – populated almost entirely by Serbs – is administered in considerable part by the Serbian government, rather than the Kosovar government or the EU's mission in Kosovo.
To my mind, this is an oversimplification. The Tadic government is more pro-Western than its population, and faced enormous protests when it turned over Radovan Karadzic this summer. They can only be pushed so far without utterly losing domestic credibility – particularly on areas of Kosovo, a region which is of intensely emotional historic and religious import to Serbs.
As for Bosnia, Abramowicz and Serwer are certainly correct that it's a difficult time; there are serious lingering tensions, and the New York Times last week published a very thorough examination of Bosnian radicalization. As Dan Bilefsky goes to great lengths to make clear, Bosnian Islam is historically utterly inimical to fundamentalist radicalism. However, $700 million in Saudi funds for fundamentalist education and population changes created by mujahid who came to support the Bosnian Muslim government during the war and stayed in the country have created a more conservative undercurrent in Bosnia's progressive version of Islam.
Again, though, Abramowicz and Serwer's solution is imperfect. They’re right to call for an extension of foreign peacekeepers’ presence in Bosnia – in 2007, locals and internationals alike were concerned the end of peacekeepers would mean the end of peace. However, they also argue for expanding the powers of the Office of the High Representative – a move which would diminish the credibility and authority of the national government and, accordingly, draw significant blowback from domestic politicians of all ethnicities. It’d also be a big step backwards, and it's historically questionable; an extended period of strong international authority in the High Representative didn't manage to avoid the current mini-crisis, and there's no reason to believe a return to strong international authority would solve it.
