Morton Abramowitz: The Death of the Bosnian State

Morton Abramowitz is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation.

The Dayton Accords left Bosnia a divided ethnic quasi state, and their implementation has not much changed that fact. The decisive event solidifying the ethnic divide was the failure to stop the exodus of several hundred thousand Serbs from Sarajevo to the Serb entity in Bosnia—Republika Srpska (RS)—or Serbia itself. The multiethnic Sarajevo is history. The present major feature in Bosnia is a hardening ethnic divide. The RS basically seeks independence or, at a minimum, a great deal of autonomy. Bosnia’s Croats—still in a diminishing federation with the Bosniaks—have Croatian passports and many are leaving for Croatia or elsewhere, a trend stoked by the new, less restrained Croatian government. Only the Bosniaks seem determined to keep the state going. Bosnia has made some economic progress, not surprising given billions of dollars in foreign aid; a continuation of 15 years of marginal prosperity precludes large-scale violence. But if the RS were to leave Bosnia, widespread violence would likely follow.

All ethnic parties—some more than others—have contributed to the impasse that has left Bosnia with no central government ten months after elections. The Office of the High Representative (OHR), once the Western oversight mechanism to prevent ethnic backsliding and hopefully reduce Dayton’s structural separatism, is widely perceived to have frittered away its influence. It has become a relic, and yet the United States seeks to continue its existence, supposedly to preserve Dayton’s provisions. On the other hand, the EU wants replace OHR with a “robust” EU mission in the belief that its sizeable aid and its effective management, coupled with the promise of EU accession, (even if distant), will ultimately get the ethnic parties to join together in a workable central state.

The EU has become the top player in Bosnia and indeed the whole Balkans (replacing the Americans everywhere except for Kosovo) and provides most of the ever-diminishing peacekeeping forces. That division makes sense so long as membership in the EU remains the end goal for all Balkan countries. Whether dangling the accession carrot before the Bosnians will do the trick of uniting the country remains to be seen, especially when many European voices want to end EU enlargement after Croatia’s accession...