Nearly three decades ago, the international community left Bosnia to bleed out. Under the eyes of the western powers, who might have intervened early on and deflected an all-out humanitarian catastrophe and a genocide, the country underwent nearly four years of conflict, write thenationalnews.com
All wars are cruel, but the Bosnian war was a template for misery. The capital, Sarajevo, once the site of the 1984 winter Olympics and a symbol of multicultural, multi-faith communities, was subjected to a medieval siege.
The war concluded after the genocide in the town of Srebrenica, which could have been prevented had irresponsible diplomacy and inertia not prevailed. In July 1995, nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys were separated from the women under the eyes of UN peacekeepers who stood by and failed to defend them. They were loaded onto trucks, not knowing they were being sent to death, and then hunted down in forests or gunned down en masse in factories. Some of their bodies have never been recovered.
Finally, in the wake of that tremendous sorrow, then US president Bill Clinton ordered airstrikes and American diplomats arm-wrestled former the warring parties to a shaky peace agreement, the Dayton Accords.
The Dayton Accords were never meant to last decades. They were insufficient, and in many ways, rewarded the perpetrators of that war, which included the Bosnian Serbs and their masters in Belgrade: then Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic and his cronies. There were few provisions for constructive transitional justice, and that meant most of the victims – of concentration camps, rape camps, or ethnically cleansed villages – never saw justice.
This state now consists of two entities, Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. To make it even more confusing, the latter consists of 10 separate “canons” each with its legislatures and governments.
From the beginning, those of us watching the Balkans carefully knew there would be trouble, and that the Dayton Accords that were meant to foster peace would foster a deepened resentment and ethnic divides. The provisions that divided the entities also carved deep ethnic and religious divisions.
Last October, in Banja Luka – the capital of Republika Srpska – Milorad Dodik, the Bosnian Serb leader and ultra-nationalist, announced plans to withdraw the republic from major state institutions. He wants to set up separate tax offices, army and security apparatus. This is effectively secession. As it was secession that launched the former Yugoslavian wars back in the early 1990s – first Slovenia, then Croatia, finally Bosnia – this news sends a terrifying message to the country. The chief international representative in Bosnia, Christian Schmidt, in a report to the UN, says Bosnia is facing “its greatest existential threat of the post-war period”.
Are we headed for another war?
“See you in 20 years,” my Bosnian friends quipped in 1995 after the war ended, meaning it would all start up again. It seemed improbable then, but today, Europe is on shaky ground. There are concerns about a military standoff between Russia and Ukraine, Belarus and Poland are involved in a migrant crisis, and now Republika Srpska may be trying to break away. Those who care about Bosnia must, therefore, act quickly to avoid another potential bloodbath.
US President Joe Biden has effectively signalled that he is shifting America’s focus away from so-called trouble zones (aside from Taiwan). The collapse of Afghanistan has led to a new wave of refugees, some freezing to death in forests on the Poland-Belarus border. But the US is reeling from the pandemic, racial tensions and a resurgent Republican Party ahead of the 2022 midterm election. Bosnia will be the last thing on Mr Biden’s mind.
And yet, Bosnia must not be abandoned again.
