Bosnia and Kosovo attract little interest these day; there are too many other hotspots attracting international attention. But things are changing there — at least in Bosnia. Eleven years after civil war erupted there, the present tortured chapter in its history may be about to come to an end. That is not because the inhabitants of Bosnia have finally decided they want to live in a multicultural, multiethnic society. Nor is it because international pressure for reconciliation is finally working. It is because the rest of former Yugoslavia has moved on and is busy trying to do three things — stimulate local economic growth, join the EU and NATO, and rebuild old relationships. In Croatia and in Serbia — the two countries which did so much to poison ethnic divides within Bosnia — its divisions and problems are no longer of any interest.
Things are happening in the Balkans which would have been unimaginable even just a year ago. Last week in the Austrian city of Salzburg during a summit of Central and East European states, the leaders of Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro and the current Bosnian president, at a separate meeting to discuss cooperation, decided to ease visa regulations between their countries. Since then, ministers from all the Balkan states have been in Macedonia to discuss regional security. Meanwhile, Macedonia and Albania are working on a free-trade agreement; Montenegro and Serbia say that plans to harmonize their economies have been fulfilled and so are ready to sign a stabilization and association agreement with the EU; the Hague-based international war crimes tribunal’s chief prosecutor has hailed a new era of cooperation with Serbian and Montenegrin authorities; and the international community’s high representative to Bosnia, Paddy Ashdown, has spoken of growing cooperation between the Serb statelet in Bosnia, the Republika Srpska, and Bosnian state institutions. It is all very encouraging.
Strongest evidence of winds of change blowing through the Balkans is the persistent rumor in Belgrade that the Serbian government is prepared to agree to the dissolution of the Republika Srpska if Bosnia withdraws charges of aggression and genocide at the International Court of Justice and agrees to an out-of-court settlement. An end to the Republika Srpska would change everything in Bosnia. Certainly as long as it remains in existence, beyond the norms of international law and a refuge for indicted war criminals, there will be no healing of Bosnia’s wounds; justice will remain undone. Nor is there any hope of turning Bosnia into a stable, functioning state while it is made up of two, in reality three, independent elements. The 1995 Dayton Agreement will have to go. The country could be partitioned, but that would create a non-viable Muslim state. Much better that it is reinforced by getting rid of the division between Serb and Muslim-Croat halves and going back to the UN’s 1992 plan for a united but decentralized Bosnia with several provincial, non-ethnically based governments. That way it would have a future and Bosnians could finally be their own masters.
The fact that Belgrade now appears willing to agree that Republika Srpska be integrated into Bosnia says much about how changed Serbia is. Maybe, eleven years on, the UN plan’s time is about to arrive.
