The final tally, just announced, in Bosnia’s Oct. 5 elections makes dismal reading. The clear winners were the three nationalist parties — Muslim, Serbian and Croat — all of whom loathe each other, have played too deep a part in the country’s destruction and can offer nothing constructive for its future. They will scare away international investors, which means much-needed jobs will not be created and thus discontent will continue. Not that they have the power to impose their divisive agendas, which include preventing the return of refugees: the international community remains the ultimate authority in the country, and it is determined on reintegration.
But the international community cannot act as if the election had not happened. In voting for the nationalists, Bosnians of all three groupings have made it clear that for them their cultural and national identities remain the overriding consideration — and they are not going to have foreigners telling them how they should live and with whom. The international community may not like that, but it is going to have come to terms with it. It needs to rethink its long-term strategy in the country — which may have to include accepting its partition.
It is going to be the same sort of result in Kosovo when it elects a Parliament this week. Among the Albanian majority, it will be the nationalists that garner the most votes while among the minority Serbs, nationalism will be the victor through boycott; efforts by the UN civilian administrator to persuade the latter to join in have been firmly rebuffed.
It is, however, the vote in another part of former Yugoslavia that points the way ahead for Bosnia and, probably, Kosovo. The international strategy to keep the one nominally united and the other from independence or union with Albania has just been given a body blow by the voters of little Montenegro — the sole remaining partner with Serbia in the Yugoslav Federation on which the international community have been relying to make a threesome with Kosovo rather than see it go independent and then probably unite with Albania. That scenario fills them with dread because they fear it will result in fresh conflict in Macedonia, with Albanians, Greeks, Bulgarians and Turks being drawn into war to partition it.
The new Montenegrin Parliament is dominated by those who want independence. There is every reason to believe that within four or five years, Montenegro will be an independent sovereign state — which means that there is no chance of a federation comprising just Kosovo and Serbia. Federalism is dead and all but buried.
That means no federation for Kosovo to join. It will have to be given independence: the UN cannot sit on it forever. But if it is allowed independence and then a vote to join Albania, the UN will be unable to stop the Serb ministate in Bosnia demanding the same and joining with Serbia. Paddy Ashdown, the international community’s high representative in Bosnia, is bitterly opposed to such an idea, which he calls dangerous — and it is. It would precipitate a few between the remaining Croats and Muslims. But he is whistling in the wind: it is going to happen, just as Kosovan independence will happen. The Montenegrins have made it inevitable.
