Passing virtually unnoticed this past week was the 10-year anniversary of the Dayton Accords, which ended the brutal and bloody civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. I suppose it was fitting that the anniversary attracted so little attention. After all, the war in Bosnia was never really much of a headline-grabber in this country. Most Americans were never able to really wrap their heads around the reality of what was happening in a dirty, grimy corner of Eastern Europe. The fueds and rivalries were too convoluted and Byzantine, the violence too senseless, and let’s face it; it was half a world away and really had no impact on American security. To say that we didn’t have a dog in that fight would have been an understatement.
Of course, simple human decency mandated that the US, as the world’s only remaining superpower, take a lead role in resolving the conflict in Bosnia. Though Bosnia was a European problem that rightfully should have been handled by Europe, most European powers were focused on diplomatic niceties as Muslim, Croats, and Serbs were massacred.Yes, what can be described as perhaps the worst genocide since WWII didn’t have to happen as it did. That Europe sat by while Bosnia burned is hardly a matter for debate. Thankfully, the Clinton Administration took matters in hand and found a way to convince Muslims, Serbs, and Croats to make peace. It wasn’t a just peace, or even a good one, but it did stop the killing.
Anniversaries have the effect of forcing people to take stock of neglected problems. Ten years ago, an agreement cobbled together at an Air Force base near Dayton, Ohio, put an end to a brutal civil war in Bosnia. The war among Bosnian Muslims, Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs left 200,000 dead and millions homeless, so the agreement was hailed as a triumph. But the price of peace was to leave Bosnia a broken country of two entities and 10 cantons, with three presidents. One reason it has muddled along since then is that a lot of power is still vested in a foreign overseer backed by foreign troops.
Fortunately, the 10th anniversary of Dayton has prompted American and European officials to start thinking about what to do next. Last month an agreement was reached to begin building a national police force. Over the weekend, Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, brought Bosnian politicians together in Washington and got them to agree to work on constitutional changes. They also agreed to press for the capture of the two most-wanted war criminals from the Bosnian conflict, Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic. Bringing them to trial would be an important sign that the Bosnians are really moving on.
Without the capture of Mladic and Karadzic, Bosnia in the short term has no hope of demonstrating that the rule of law has taken hold. The longer that Bosnian Serbs and the government of Serbia & Montenegro harbor these two war criminals, the less likely it will be that the world will believe that Bosnia is serious about it’s future as a member of the international community.
The task of building a real country out of a battlefield in which former combatants still live largely apart and identify more with their separate tribes than with a country called Bosnia and Herzegovina is daunting. The absence of an effective central government for the past decade has prevented the development of the economy, with the result that unemployment is at about 40 percent and the majority of people subsist on a gray or black market.
Ten years ago, the foreign mediators, led by the American diplomat Richard Holbrooke, managed quite a feat in wrenching the Bosnians from one another’s throats. But the Dayton accords have outlived their usefulness and have become an obstacle to Bosnia’s development.
I listened to an interview with Nicholas Burns on NPR last week, in which he (with no lack of irony) referred to Bosnia as “not a normal country”. To call this something of an understatement would in itself be something of an understatement. The only good thing to come out of the Dayton Accords was the end of the Bosnian War. Ten years later, Bosnia is still a mess, separated along ethnic lines while economic progress and the process of governing move along at a glacial pace. It’s now long since time for Bosnia and it’s citizens to take the next step and rejoin the international community. Whether Bosnians can leave the hatreds of the past behind them and move forward as citizens of Bosnia instead of Muslims, Croats, or Serbs remains to be seen.
One of the things I learned during my time in the former Yugoslavia is that ethnic hatred and distrust is a river that runs very deep. That hatred and distrust has been handed down from generation to generation and has flourished in a part of the world that above all else knows how to hold a grudge. This is a cycle that can be broken, if all three communities can agree to look forward instead of living in the past. Given what has happened since the dissolution of Yugoslavia, however, it’s understandable that leaving the past behind can be exceedingly difficult. My experience there, and the stories I heard, would chill the blood of any reasonable, thoughtful person. Forgiveness is not a quality that can be found in abundance in Bosnia or indeed in just about any part of the former Yugoslavia. To paraphrase the late Yitzhak Rabin, there has been too much blood and too many tears shed to think that Bosnians will simply let bygones be bygones…and yet, that is exactly what will need to happen if Bosnia is to have any hope for it’s future.
