Bosnia facing most serious crisis in years

The international community’s representative in Bosnia, the Austrian diplomat Valentin Inzko, reported to the UN Security Council today that the still fractured country faces a dangerous political crisis: Bosnia and Herzegovina is facing its worst crisis since fighting stopped in 1995, with no prospect of a new state government being formed, a stalled economy and ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

The international community's representative in Bosnia, the Austrian diplomat Valentin Inzko, reported to the UN Security Council today that the still fractured country faces a dangerous political crisis:

The international community’s representative in Bosnia, the Austrian diplomat Valentin Inzko, reported to the UN Security Council today that the still fractured country faces a dangerous political crisis:

Bosnia and Herzegovina is facing its worst crisis since fighting stopped in 1995, with no prospect of a new state government being formed, a stalled economy and a direct threat from Republika Srpska to the country’s very existence, the Security Council heard today.

Valentin Inzko, the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, told a Council debate that Republika Srpska – one of two semi-autonomous entities that comprise the country – has taken “concrete actions which represent the most serious violation of the Dayton Paris Peace Agreement” since the pact was signed at the end of 1995.

The immediate crisis is a referendum arranged by the authorities in the Serb portion of Bosnia on the powers of the international High Representative and the legitimacy of federal institutions in Bosnia. The deeper problem is the same one that plunged Bosnia into war in 1992: the unwillingness of many Bosnian Serbs to live in a state in which they are not the majority.

Council dynamics on Bosnia are complicated. Russia has traditionally been sympathetic to the Serb position while the Western powers have not. The recent precedent of Kosovo’s declaration of independence also muddies the diplomatic waters. Prominent Bosnian Serbs have at times argued that if Kosovo has the right to independence then the Serb slice of Bosnia should have an equal right. 

Bosnia itself holds a Security Council seat at the moment and may have the chance to vote on its own case should the Council take some action.

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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