My Bosnian daydream

Like many of the Bosnians quoted by Reuters, I’ve got mixed feelings about the ferocious protests of the past few days.  The violence and destruction are deplorable.  The resentment and demand for change understandable.  The country has seen little economic, political or social progress for more or less a decade.

Bosnia is stuck in an institutional morass created at the Dayton peace talks that ended the war in 1995 but failed to provide functional governance.  My colleague at SAIS Ed Joseph thinks the US and EU should make another push at internal reforms in exchange for acceleration of Bosnia’s EU candidacy.  I agree that is a good idea.  And as he suggests, there are constitutional proposals left over from past efforts that are worth reviving, revising and returning to parliament for approval.

But little will change unless Bosnians decide it has to. Peaceful continuation of the protests is one way to signal the desire for change.  Peaceful protests have a much better chance of mobilizing large numbers of people across ethnic lines than the violence of the past few days, which frightens Bosnians concerned with anything that might return the country to war.  Minorities in particular worry that the protests may take an ethnic turn.  Even peaceful demonstrations unnerve older Bosnians, who may remember that the war started with one.

Another opportunity comes in next fall’s presidential and parliamentary elections.  By then, the Dayton constitution will have kept Bosnia enchained in a strait jacket of ethnically-based parties for almost twenty years.  The Americans and Europeans would do well to abandon their usual refrain, “we support the process, not any particular candidates.”  They need to support those who are ready to cross ethnic lines to find allies willing to advocate constitutional change that will enable more effective governance consonant with EU requirements.  Otherwise, the ethnic nationalists may well succeed once again, electing people who advocate an entirely different kind of constitutional change, including independence for Republika Srpska and a third, Croat entity.

These two ideas are the zombies of the Bosnian war.  They never seem to die.  Here is my wooden stake:  both notions would lead to a three-way partition of Bosnia, with one of the emerging entities a land-locked, non-viable Islamic republic ripe for radicalization and seething with irredentist ambitions.  It is hard for me to picture a worse neighbor for Belgrade and Zagreb, or a less welcome development from the US and EU perspective.

Fortunately, the idea of a Bosnian Islamic republic isn’t very attractive to most Bosnian Muslims either.  The more common and deeply rooted Bosniak attitude is support for a unified secular state on the whole territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with minority protection primarily based on respect for individual (rather than group) human rights and the rule of law.  But the Bosniak political leadership has failed to find sufficient Croat and Serb allies to give that vision the votes it needs in parliament, partly because it is so much easier to fish for votes with the bait of Bosniak nationalism.

This is the bad habit Bosnians need to break:  the slide back to identity politics because the Dayton political system and long habit make it so much easier to garner votes that way.  Someone has to emerge with the capacity to transcend ethnic nationalism and speak effectively for the genuine Bosnian aspirations that put people into the streets this week:  jobs, equality, good governance and a European future.  When that happens, there will be a rush to cross-ethnic coalitions, because it will be the only way to compete effectively.  So far, only Željko Komšić, the Croat member of the presidency, has succeeded at this, which is why he comes in for so much approbation from the nationalists.

Am I day dreaming?  Yes.  But sometimes daydreams come true.