What The Hell Is Happening In Bosnia?

A photo of the protests in Sarajevo yesterday. Courtesy of my family who are still there. #Bosnia pic.twitter.com/Wxg66uR7TD

— Marina Dovey (@D0Marina) February 12, 2014

Merdijana Sadović summarizes the latest:

What started earlier last week as peaceful demonstrations by unemployed workers in the town of Tuzla – one of the main industrial hubs in pre-war Bosnia – turned into the worst violence this country has seen since the end of the conflict. Within a few days, the unrest had spread to other cities in the Federation, the larger of Bosnia’s two administrative entities, which is populated mainly by Bosniaks and Croats. The other entity created by the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement which ended the war is the Serb-majority Republika Srpska (RS), which largely escaped the protests.

While most Bosnians sympathized with the protesters’ fury about unemployment and rampant corruption, as well as their demands for local officials to resign, they were taken aback by the violence, as government buildings in Tuzla, Sarajevo, Zenica and Mostar were set ablaze. Dozens of people were injured, most of them police officers protecting these buildings.

Harriet Salem sheds some light on the reasons for the unrest:

Ostensibly, the protests can be linked to widespread public discontent over Bosnia’s rampant unemployment and beleaguered economy. Nationwide, joblessness stands at 44.5 percent; it is a staggering 60 percent in the 15-to-24-year-old age bracket. The average wage is around $545 per month – one of the lowest in Europe.

But these economic woes are fueled by a much more deep-seated problem: a political system mired in corruption and nepotism.

In the aftermath of the Bosnian War, dodgy backroom deals to dole out businesses nationalized during the socialist era – including the Tuzla factories – were some of the first examples of the long list of dubious tactics deployed by the political elite to line their own pockets. Often sold under favorable conditions to the cronies of politicians, the businesses had new bosses who were frequently either incompetent or outright crooked. The resulting combination of inefficient management, skimming, and the state turning a blind eye to it all drove several vitally important local industries to the point of collapse

Joshua Keating adds, “the political paralysis that led to the current crisis is certainly related to the compromise that ended the war”:

[T]he political paralysis that led to the current crisis is certainly related to the compromise that ended the war. The Dayton Accords, which ended the war in 1995, were designed to divide power among the Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs. In practice, as a 2011 Reuters feature put it, the deal “split the country into two autonomous, ethnically based regions so decentralized and unwieldy that Bosnia barely functions at the state level.” …

The Dayton Accords may have been the best deal available at the time, and negotiators including the late U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke certainly deserve credit for helping to end the bloodshed. But in the name of stopping the fighting, the agreement put off questions of how the cobbled-together nation was supposed to function as a state. Twenty years later, those chickens seem to be coming home to roost.