E.U. and U.S. Talks Aim to End Bosnia Deadlock

Amid the treelined boulevards and bustling cafés of the pretty Bosnian city of Banja Luka, the horrors of war seem like a nightmare past. But prod lightly, ask the right question, and the resentments and fears that sparked the brutal conflict here 17 years ago have always been easy enough to find. Lately, they've been shouted from government buildings. Milorad Dodik, the bellicose Bosnian Serb leader, claimed in a September speech that Bosnian Muslims are "hysterically" calling for the abolition of the Serb part of the country. The Office of the High Representative, which oversees the country on behalf of the international community, he said, was running Bosnia as "an undeclared protectorate and imprisoned state." Dodik also faces charges for denying some of the worst crimes committed by Serbs during the war. A fresh outbreak of violence, says Sulejman Tihic, leader of the largest Bosnian Muslim party, is beginning to feel inevitable. "If it continues to go on like this, there is no question there will be conflict," he says. "It's just a question of what kind of conflict there will be, and is it going to be in three months, six months or one year?"

The 1995 Dayton agreement that ended the Bosnian war was supposed to give birth to a new country in which Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims, known as Bosniaks, could live side by side in relative harmony. But the peace was an untidy one. Dayton enshrined ethnic divisions in law, and created two largely autonomous entities, a Bosniak-Croat federation and the Serb-controlled Republika Srpska. On the national level, it explicitly split power between the three groups, creating a bloated and inefficient government in which all decisions must be made by consensus. (Read: "Bosnia's Islamic Revival.")

Over the past three years, the political situation, never easy, has deteriorated sharply. In September, a dispute over Bosnia's state power-transmission company threatened to bring the situation to a head. Like everything in Bosnia, Elektroprenos BiH is divided along ethnic lines and managed by consensus. But for more than a year, Bosnian Serbs have paralyzed the company; the management board has not met, the terms of key officials have expired and more than $110 million intended for new investments sits unspent. When current high representative Valentin Inzko stepped in to break the deadlock using the authority granted to him under Dayton, the Republika Srpska's parliament declared his power illegitimate and threatened to withdraw from state institutions altogether.

Much of the current bitterness dates to a failed attempt to reform Bosnia's Dayton-imposed constitution in 2006. Debate over the constitution and subsequent elections stoked Serb fears that Bosnian Muslims wanted to eliminate the Republika Srpska and absorb it into a stronger central state. Bosnian Croat and Muslim politicians have since cooled their nationalist rhetoric. Dodik, who has been investigated but not charged for alleged corruption by Bosnian officials, has ramped up his threats. That has a growing number of observers worried that Bosnia risks partition or even renewed conflict. "This is a crucial moment and if the international community fails to address it, Bosnia risks slipping towards disintegration," says British diplomat Paddy Ashdown, who served as high representative from 2002 until early 2006. Ashdown has been one of the most vocal critics of both Bosnia's leaders and Europe's lack of action there. Since 2006, he says, Europe has failed to engage because it considered its job in Bosnia done. That's "a fatally mistaken view," Ashdown told TIME. (Read: "Will Bosnia Test the Obama Administration.")

The deteriorating situation has prompted U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg and Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who served as Bosnia's first high representative, to step into the fray. On Oct. 9, the two diplomats will arrive in Sarajevo to try to strong-arm its leaders and prevent the country splitting apart.

On the ground, many are skeptical. Kurt Bassuener, a Sarajevo-based analyst with the Democratization Policy Council, a think tank and lobby group, says the attention from Brussels and Washington is welcome, but warns that Bosnia is not ready for international oversight to end. The country still lacks stable institutions, he says. "Dayton Bosnia has functioned only with those guardrails, and if you're going to remove those, you need to be sure that what you have in place works." (See pictures of the Belgrade riots.)

A Bridge Too Far
The mixed Croat-Muslim city of Mostar, near the southwest border with Croatia, illustrates Bosnia's postwar challenges in microcosm. Once a vibrant metropolis of Serbs, Croats and Muslims, and famous for its graceful 16th century Ottoman bridge across the River Neretva, it is now hardly a model for integration. When the bridge was blown up during the war, the city's peaceful, multiethnic character was destroyed too. The bridge has been rebuilt, but the Serb community is largely gone and Muslims and Croats live on opposite sides of the city. The barrier between the two sides is more psychological than real. There are no fences or walls dividing the city's east from west, but the two communities, like much of Bosnia, live largely separate lives. Muslims and Croats go to different schools and eat in different restaurants. They even receive their mail through different postal services. The city government is supposed to be united, but a deadlock between Muslim and Croat politicians has left Mostar without a mayor, or a new budget, for almost a year. (See pictures of Muslim modernity.)

On a national level, paralysis has turned into outright confrontation. Many diplomats still believe the promise of European Union and NATO membership will be enough to put Bosnia back on track. But such incentives will work only if Dodik and other Bosnian Serb leaders give up their dream of independence. Nebojsa Radmanovic, the Serb member of Bosnia's tripartite presidency, denies Bosnian Serbs want independence and says Serbs are unfairly blamed for the political stalemate in the country. The real fault lies with Bosnian Muslims who want to limit Serb autonomy, and the international community, which is sowing conflict in order to prolong its stay, Radmanovic says. "These false accusations are being used to exert pressure on Serbs and it is becoming counterproductive," he says. "Because at the end of the day, you might be put in a situation where the majority says we don't want to live together in a country like this. Then you have a problem."

On the streets of Banja Luka, there's little sense that people belong to a place called Bosnia. Sitting on a park bench in the shadow of the recently rebuilt Orthodox Church of the Holy Savior, 21-year-old Mirjana Stanojevic echoes popular sentiment when she says she still longs for Mother Serbia. "I'm a citizen of the Republika Srpska. I don't care for Bosnia," says Stanojevi, a journalism student whose memories of the war are dim. "They want to put us together, but we don't want that." (Read: "Right-Wing Threats Scrap Serbian Gay-Pride Parade.")

Few Bosnians believe there will be a repeat of the 1990s. The region is less militarized today, and the ethnic cleansing of the 1990s was so complete that Bosnia's ethnic groups can live separate lives for years. But Bosnia's Muslims, in particular, fear what would happen without the high representative and the 2,000 European troops who ensure the peace. "If they left here, in seven days there would be war," warns Enver Basi, a former Muslim soldier who fought Serbs and Croats during the war and now sells tomatoes, plums and cabbages in an outdoor market in Mostar's Muslim east. "Maybe sooner."

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