Bosnians look to map out a future
Country outgrows Dayton accord Constitutional changes in works
SARAJEVO, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA— Ten years after Bosnia’s bloodshed ended in a peace accord reached 8,045 kilometres away in Dayton, Ohio, a bunch of Bosnian teenagers set out to determine why their country is still dysfunctional. They soon discovered what a new generation of Bosnians has learned the hard way: Dayton was a roadmap to peace, not a blueprint for the future. So they have written a new mock constitution for a country with an unwieldy power-sharing system that is designed — but often fails — to satisfy everyone.
“ Dayton may have worked at the time to stop the war, but its shelf life has expired,” said 15year- old Senad. “ On the state level, we have three presidents and they don’t get along. Such a country cannot work.” The high schoolers’ work has drawn the attention of the U. S. ambassador to Bosnia, Douglas McElhaney, who says he will take it to Washington, where negotiations are underway for changes in the existing constitution. But the negotiators face many of the same problems that bedevilled the authors of the Dayton accord — rival claims, rooted in ancient historical, and ethnic and religious grievances.
Brokered by the United States, the accord was announced on Nov. 21, 1995, in Dayton and signed in Paris three weeks later. It ended a 1992- 95 war among Muslims who call themselves Bosniaks, Orthodox Serbs and Roman Catholic Croats that claimed 260,000 lives and drove another 1.8 million people from their homes. The accord recognized Bosnia, formerly a piece of an imploded Yugoslavia, as an independent country. NATO deployed 60,000 peacekeepers to keep its armies apart. Now a force of 7,000 European Union troops busies itself with fighting organized crime and illegal logging in Bosnia’s lush forests. Bosnia’s own army, 13,000-strong and multiethnic, is being formed.
This week, Bosnia is expected to sign an agreement to prepare it for its long- term goal of joining the EU. “The peace stabilization has been a miracle,” said British diplomat Paddy Ashdown, Bosnia’s international administrator. Richard Holbrooke, the U. S. diplomat who brokered the Dayton deal, says: “ It is hard to think of any other peace process in the last decade . . .that has done nearly as well as this one.” The Dayton accord divided the country of 3.2 million into two ethnic mini- states with broad autonomy, a shared parliament and government and a threeman presidency. But the power to impose laws and fire officials is in the hands of a foreigner, currently Ashdown. A consensus has emerged that Bosnia has outgrown Dayton. Parallel or overlapping agencies compound Bosnia’s problems of poverty, corruption and 40 per cent unemployment. Sixty- two per cent of Bosnia’s youths want to leave, a U. N. study found. But Senad and his friends who spent their summer writing a constitution are resolved to stay. “Our constitution erases the mini- states, foresees one president and does not separate ‘ us’ from ‘ them,’ ” he said. “ I swear now that I will stay here and fight for my dream to come true.”