Bosnia Offers a Warning On Deep Ethnic Division
war. It divided Bosnia into two “entities” — a Serb-run Republika Srpska and a mixed Muslim- Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, controlled by three elected presidents, one each for Bosnian Serbs, Croats and Muslims, who are known as Bosniaks.
Mr. Golos, the Muslim firefighter, said he has many friends across the ethnic boundary and feels no enmity toward Serbs, who started the fighting but have now mostly left, or Croats, who rained artillery shells and sniper fire into his neighborhood.
But he worries that wartime divisions have hardened. Because of largely segregated schooling, a postwar generation of young Croats and Bosniaks often know only members of their own group.
“We have moved backwards, not forward,” Mr. Golos said.
For more than two decades, Bosnia’s fragile system has defied predictions of imminent collapse. This ability to survive against the odds, however, is now seriously at risk, said Paddy Ashdown, a British politician who from 2002 to 2006 served as Bosnia’s most senior foreign official, its so- called high representative.
His gloomy prognosis follows national elections held in October that were dominated, particularly in the Republika Srpska, by divisive appeals for tribal loyalty.
The result of the balloting, which selected a hard- line nationalist as the Serb member of the presidency, has stirred fury among Croats, who complain that the election for their own slot on the presidency was tainted by ethnically impure voting: Many Muslims voted for the Croat winner, a moderate Croat now denounced by hard-liners because of his support across ethnic lines.
The problem now, Mr. Ashdown said, is that Europe and the United States are themselves polarized and have diminishing interest in Bosnia’s troubles. The vacuum is being filled by Russia as a protector of the Serbs and Turkey on behalf of Muslims.
In a recent report on Bosnia to the United Nations, the current high representative in Sarajevo, Valentin Inzko, complained that before the October election, Bosnian politicians and parties “focused primarily on criticizing each other or the international community and grandstanding on divisive nationalist issues, rather than governing effectively and adopting necessary reforms.”
Such grandstanding, amplified by an economic system in which jobs and the spoils of corruption are often divided along ethnic lines, has crippled Bosnia as a functioning state.
Differences between Bosniaks,
A fragile country has survived. So has nationalism.
Croats and Serbs are so small — they speak the same language, look the same and mostly eat the same food — that some scholars have turned to Freud and what he called “the narcissism of minor differences” to explain their rival nationalisms.
The only clear marker is religion, though few people worship regularly and nearly all like going to bars and cafes.
Bosnia’s biggest curse, said Amna Popovac, an activist in Mostar for Nasa Stranka, a multiethnic party, is its nationalist political leaders, who fan the fears of the communities they claim to represent to save themselves and a deeply corrupt system that has enriched them.
Ms. Popovac said, “Just follow the money.”