Bosnia: a tearing sound

One more article from The Economist, a magazine not very confident in the Balkans'future.
Hoping they would mistake..

Could fighting resume?

A JOKE doing the rounds has it that nothing can succeed in Bosnia, not even a crisis. Pessimists note that Yugoslavs used to tell a similar joke in the 1980s. One diplomat believes that Bosnia’s gridlock has got so bad, and the political atmosphere so poisonous, that for the first time since 1995 the unthinkable of renewed fighting is thinkable once again. This does not mean a new war is imminent. But conflict is now a distinct possibility.

On March 27th Miroslav Lajcak, the new Slovak foreign minister, held a party for Valentin Inzko, his Austrian successor as the international high representative in Bosnia. He is the fourth man who is due to be the last in his job. Yet at least until the end of the year, his powerful office will stay open. After that Mr Inzko is meant to remain only in his capacity as the European Union’s special representative, with no legal powers.

Much of the panic over Bosnia revolves around whether this switch from a powerful high representative to a weaker EU envoy is sensible. And not just that. After the end of the war in 1995 Bosnia was flooded with 60,000 NATO-led peacekeepers. Today there are 2,000 bored, EU-led ones. By the end of the year that number may have shrunk to 200. The pessimistic diplomat suggests that this is all horrible, an appalling mistake that risks sending the wrong signals at the wrong time.

At Mr Lajcak’s party Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) greeted each other but then clustered in their own groups. Writ large, that is Bosnia’s problem. Its complex constitutional structure works well enough for day-to-day matters, but has ground to a halt on any issues of real significance. At least on March 26th an historic deal struck over the future of Brcko, an autonomous town within Bosnia, was endorsed by all sides.

Bosniak leaders, such as Haris Silajdzic, one of the country’s three presidents, want the Serb entity in Bosnia, the Republika Srpska, to be abolished, saying it was created through genocide. His nemesis, Milorad Dodik, Republika Srpska’s prime minister, responds with the threat of a referendum on secession. They need and feed each other, comments Milos Solaja, who heads the Centre for International Relations in Banja Luka.

In cafés and think-tanks there are suggestions that all sides are arming again, albeit discreetly through hunting clubs and security firms. There is no hard evidence of this. Indeed, Igor Radojicic, speaker of the Republika Srpska’s parliament, says that these “ridiculous” stories are spread deliberately by Bosniaks, who want to make sure that the high representative’s office does not close and to lure the new Obama administration to their side.

Most Bosnian Serbs say secession is not realistic. They just want to defend the autonomy they won in the 1995 Dayton accords that ended the war. Bosniaks believe that, by blocking as much legislation as he can, Mr Dodik is following the example of Milo Djukanovic, the Montenegrin leader, when he set out to prove that the loose federation of Serbia and Montenegro could not work. Meanwhile, the Croat-Bosniak federation is teetering close to bankruptcy, with vast sums going to so-called war veterans, who constitute a powerful lobby.

Little will now be done in Bosnia until the party congress of the leading Bosniak party in May. Sulejman Tihic, who has initiated serious talks with his Serb and Croat counterparts about the country’s future, faces a challenge to his leadership. He is charged with treachery by his Bosniak enemies. As the economic crisis worsens, Bosnian leaders will do what they do best, which is to play on fear. For now all agree that there is no appetite for war among ordinary Bosnians. But fear and anger could, if shaken up enough, turn into a deadly cocktail for their country.

(The Economist, April 2nd 2009)