Bosnia and Herzegovina in Two Centuries: From the Yugoslav Dream to the Dayton Nightmare

By: Rasim Belko @rasimbelko

Bosnia and Herzegovina is a country whose history is equal to the bloody balance of Europe in miniature. A country where empires came and went, where borders were drawn with sabers, and the destinies of nations were decided at the tables of foreign powers. Two centuries for this country mean two centuries of struggle to be its own – between foreign interests, its own illusions, and international experiments. From the Austro-Hungarian occupation, through Yugoslav integration, to the Dayton amputation, Bosnia and Herzegovina has survived everything except justice. Today, it is a political laboratory, an ethnic ghetto, and an exemplary case of how genocide can be turned into a constitutional principle.

In 1945, after the end of World War II and the liberation of the country from fascist occupation, Bosnia and Herzegovina became one of the six republics of the new socialist Yugoslavia. As the only one of the then Yugoslav republics with an almost equal share of three nations – Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats – Bosnia and Herzegovina had an extremely sensitive internal political and national issue. Nevertheless, thanks to the anti-fascist struggle of all its nations and nationalities and ZAVNOBiH as the foundation of the restoration of statehood in 1943, BiH managed to achieve formal sovereignty within the socialist federation, although it did not have real political autonomy.

The post-war reconstruction period brought BiH intensive economic development, industrialization, and modernization, but also internal homogenization within the Yugoslav framework, where national issues were systematically marginalized under the guise of "brotherhood and unity." In reality, BiH often served as a buffer zone between Serbian and Croatian political interests, while Bosniaks were systematically disenfranchised and denied for decades as an equal nation, until the recognition of the name Muslims (which was a trick to recognize a religious group, not a political nation) in 1971. Although cities like Sarajevo, Tuzla, and Zenica experienced economic prosperity, and the cultural life of BiH was dynamic and open, political dependence on the center and the internal ethnic balance made Bosnia and Herzegovina permanently vulnerable.

At the end of the eighties and the beginning of the nineties of the last century, with the collapse of the Yugoslav federation and the strengthening of Greater Serbia projects in Belgrade and Zagreb, Bosnia and Herzegovina faced a historic challenge to its survival. The independence referendum held on February 29 and March 1, 1992, in which 64% of citizens participated, and 99% voted for a sovereign and independent Bosnia and Herzegovina, was an expression of the will of the majority population. However, on April 6, 1992, a brutal aggression against the internationally recognized state began, conducted from the territory of the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), with the active participation of the armed formations of Bosnian Serbs and later parts of the HVO under the direct influence of Zagreb.

In the period from 1992 to 1995, Bosnia and Herzegovina suffered unprecedented human and material losses. Hundreds of thousands killed, raped, missing, and displaced, urbicide of Sarajevo, Mostar, Foča, Prijedor, Višegrad, and dozens of other cities and villages, left permanent consequences on the social fabric of the country. The most horrific crime occurred in July 1995 in Srebrenica, where the forces of the Army of Republika Srpska, under the command of Ratko Mladić, committed genocide against more than 8,000 Bosniaks. This crime, the largest in Europe since World War II, was ruled as genocide by the International Court of Justice and the Hague Tribunal, however, despite the clearly defined structure of the crime of genocide, narratives of genocide denial and responsibility for it still dominate in parts of BiH and the region.

The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina officially ended with the Dayton Peace Agreement signed on December 14, 1995. Although this document brought much-needed peace, it simultaneously structured Bosnia and Herzegovina as a complex, dysfunctional, and deeply divided state. The Dayton Constitution, incorporated into Annex IV of the agreement, legalized the ethnic and territorial divisions created by aggression and genocide, giving constituent peoples, entities, and cantons power that often exceeds the interests of the state and its citizens.

Thirty years later, Bosnia and Herzegovina remains trapped in the Dayton framework, which prevents essential reforms and the transition to a modern, European, and civic state. Huge resources and funds of the international community have been spent on a "transition" that has never been fully implemented. The Dayton framework, based on the principle of ethnic balance, systematically blocks constitutional and institutional reforms, enables secessionist policies, and hinders the country's Euro-Atlantic path.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite everything, has survived as an internationally recognized state, but with serious internal weaknesses that permanently threaten its sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political and security stability. Instead of modernization and building a functional rule of law, BiH has been turned into a playground for political blackmail, ethnic clientelism, and institutional paralysis. Along with the usual geopolitical bargaining over its fate.

Forced Dysfunctionality and the Search for Self-Sustainability

And that's where we come to the sentence that summarizes all the cynicism of the international community and the cruel logic of realpolitik. Lord Paddy Ashdown once said: "The Dayton Peace Agreement was an extraordinary agreement to end the war, but a very bad one for building a state." And that sentence is perhaps the most precise epitaph for the Bosnia and Herzegovina that should have been, and never should have survived in the form it was imposed.

Because Bosnia and Herzegovina, let's not lie to ourselves, was sacrificed on the altar of geopolitical interests, so that Europe could sign peace and wash its hands of Balkan blood. Dayton was a diplomatic aspirin for the international community, and a lethal infusion for Bosnia and Herzegovina. The state has been reduced to a bureaucratic experiment in which crime and genocide were rewarded with entities, and victims were forced into institutional amnesia and the constant proving of their own right to exist.

Today, three decades after Dayton, the patriotic duty of every citizen and institution is to insist on reforming the existing constitutional framework, returning political power to state institutions, protecting sovereignty, and preserving the memory of the victims of aggression and genocide. Bosnia and Herzegovina has a historical right and a moral obligation to fight for the status of a modern, democratic, and civic state, free from ethnic divisions imposed by double aggression and the signature in Dayton. Europe in the 21st century must not be a space where genocide can be rewarded with political autonomy, nor a society where a criminal and his follower, as a denier of crimes, is treated as a statesman.

The fight for Bosnia and Herzegovina did not end in 1995 – it continues today, in institutions, on the streets, in international forums, classrooms, newspaper columns, and ordinary cafes. And it will continue until this country becomes a state of all its people, with one capital, one constitution, and equal rights for all. Or it will disappear as another historical footnote about how the world once again – consciously – allowed justice to falter before the price of peace.

And then, if that happens, let no one utter Ashdown's sentence. It will be too late for cynicism.