The StuSie

Bosnia-Herzegovina: The New and Unimproved Multi-Kulti Gesellschaft

http://economist.com/agenda/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5213089
Given that I'm in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, I thought it would be appropriate for me to remain in the European theater of events and news. My interest was recently peaked by an article talking about Bosnia-Herzegovina 10 years after the Dayton Agreements in Der Spiegel. When I traveled there last year I experienced first hand some the effects of the recent civil war, and learned some of the basics of Balkan history.
First of all, a short and sweet background of recent history in the former Yugoslavia: The death of Tito in 1980 - the communist leader of Yugoslavia from the end of WWII - resulted in a power vacuum that in turn caused a resurgence of ethnic tensions in Yugoslavia. The three main groups - the Bosniaks (muslim), the Croats (catholic) and the Serbs (orthodox christian) jockeyed for land and sovereignty. Like typical 8 year old boys, the three groups grabbed for their favorite cities and land; sure enough, they all wanted the same territory and toys. War ensued, and the Serbs, who happened to have some kick-ass toys on hand (Soviet tanks and a bunch of Mig-28's) camped out on the looming hills and bombed the living shit out of the majority Muslim population below. The Bosniaks, being resourceful people and realizing their military inferiority, pragmatically aligned themselves with the minority Croats (it's interesting to note that the Catholic Christian Croats are allying themselves with the Muslims rather than fellow Christians).
We all know the general outcome of this situation. Billy the Clinton to the rescue: delegates from each ethnic group are brought to, yes, the most unlikely of Accord-signing-locations imaginable, Dayton, Ohio. Seriously, who is in charge of choosing these places, and couldn't they pick a city where there are at least a single Sehenswürdigkeit. Fucking Dayton, Ohio...wow. But I digress. The three groups, all of whom were guilty of various forms of attempts at genocide, were more or less forced, again like a pair of fighting 8 year olds, to shake hands and promise not to gas and slaughter each other, becuase big boys in Europe don't do that any more.
We zoom forward ten years. Today's Bosnia-Hezegovina proudly flies its own flag, and even has its own car sticker abbreviation thingie (BiH). The problem is, it is still a very tense, ununified and poor country when one looks at the structure of legislation, the infrastructure, and the distribution of wealth and people:
As Lee, Cristo, and I drove into the northern part of the country controlled by the Serbians, they laughed at us, asking whether we really wanted to enter the country as Westerners. We reluctantly said yes, and soon found out the purpose of the query. Our Fiat nearly disappeared into the first meter-wide pothole in the middle of the road after crossing the border, then the poor Panda was nearly totalled by the dirty herd of sheep not crossing, but walking along the road. Garbage piles seemed like the norm (along with the smell), and we were perplexed by the fact that nobody seemed to be doing anything in particular. They just sort of sat around, wandered on the street, or carried half-destroyed clay bricks from one place to another. Nothing being built, nothing being destroyed, no markets, no trains. It was a perfect picture of stagnation.
So in post-Dayton Bosnia, the land was divided 49 and 51 percent between the Bosniak-Croat coalition and the Serbians, and a certain amount of autonomy was given to the respective regions. In essence, BiH has two official governments: the one for the whole country and the one for each of the two ethnic regions. Sounds like a typical clusterfuck of an agreement written by U.S. bureaucrats, huh? Well, the Dayton Agreement did succeed in stopping people like Slobodan Milosevic, but seriously dropped the organizational ball as far as establishing a realistic government. Something like 70 percent of the hard-earned taxes of the money-strapped population is used to fund the massive bureaucracy. 70 fucking percent...it almost sounds like the EU. So but that leaves a couple thousand Bosnian Convertable Marks (yep, the Bosnian currency was pegged on the good ol' German mark) to alleviate the adverse poverty, clean up some of the trash that plagues the countryside, and rebuild some of the thousands of buildings that still stand as skeletons all over the country.
On top of all of this, at the same time that the government seems to be completely inept and broke, the Serbians and the Bosniaks are still respectively pushing for their own sovereignty, while neighboring Croatia worries about the fate of its brothers and sisters living among Orthodox and Muslim majorities. Politicians from each side are for now non-violently jockeying for positions of power so that they can corruptly take advantage of the little that there is left to take advantage of. Well, it seems that the Dayton Agreements are about as fantastic as its city of origin. The question now is, how long will the politicians be satisfied with the classic push and pull of "modern democracy" before they decide the mortar and tank are much more effective tools?
I think most important in this issue is that since the war ended, all of us have seemed to have forgotten about this region. We've got more important things to worry about, like the bird flu, some burned out Renaults, and the failure of Brett Favre to throw more touchdowns than interceptions in the past four weeks. Mark my words, this area of Europe that has been a powderkeg since before powderkegs came into existence, will find itself in the Schlagzeilen again fairly soon. Hopefully this time we can find a better place to make the 8 year olds shake hands and make up. (There really isn't any better place to hear a more intelligent and in-depth discussion of this subject, because this is academic and sophisticated as it gets...dammit)

posted by der Mistfink @ 04:20