What’s the purpose for Bosnia remaining a single entity? Bosnia and RS certainly can’t go along with each other long term. What prevents them from peacefully splitting up?

Bosnia and Herzegovina got peace whilst the ethnic groups got the status of “constituent” peoples, a unique system that puts Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs ahead of ethnic minorities, which are just collectively referred to as “Others”. Is it a bit unfair to them ? Yes and that’s why European courts have ruled in favor of minorities like in the Sejdić-Finci case.

Regardless, the Bosnian War only ended by millimeters, if the war continued and the Croato-Bosniak forces were allowed to march on Banja Luka, that would create a million more Serb refugees, as the Serbs become more desperate and paranoid we might have even seen more bloodshed like the one in Srebrenica and the rest of the Podrinje area, which might have sparked a domino effect and we could have seen the same thing happen to the Krajina Serbs.

Worst case scenario being that the Bosniaks and Croats take the Brčko corridor and keep the Krajina Serbs that weren’t able to flee as prisoners of war – civilians and soldiers.

The Dayton Agreement was the best the international community could do in 1995 after several failed peace plans, in a way it was a status quo as nobody was victorious or got what they wanted. The main change from the pre-Dayton to post-Dayton state is that the Bosniaks and Croats decided to tie their territories into a federation, which is today known as the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Now that more than a quarter of a century has passed since the war, many politicians have gotten ideas of changing or even completely rescinding the Dayton Agreement, which won’t happen as the US basically treats Bosnia and Herzegovina as a protectorate.

The only way to change the status quo would be to get together and agree to the changing the Dayton agreement, which would never happen because the goals of the 3 separate constituent groups are not mutually achievable. Then the next logical step would be compromise, which would never happen because the constituent groups don’t want to compromise. And the final solution would be to unite and all act like a happy, married Bosnian couple, which would never happen because the ethnic pride outweighs the national pride among the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

So if we can’t move forward, we can only remain in a status quo or go backwards (war) and that’s why the system hasn’t changed in the past 27 years. And politicians are getting rich off the back of the citizens, makes you wonder if it’s worth to even keep the country united if it’s gonna be stagnant for the next century.

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