Montgomery: BiH is not stable and violence is possible

The last US ambassador to the FR Yugoslavia, William Montgomery, believes that the Dayton Agreement "successfully ended the war, but its numerous flaws prevent reconciliation and make BiH dysfunctional", reports the Patria News Agency.

"Such a BiH is not stable at all and has a significant potential for violence. In all of this, the losers are ordinary citizens," Montgomery wrote in an opinion piece in "Politika".

The main problem for the Dayton negotiators is the fact that there was no clear winner or loser in the war with whom to negotiate, Montgomery said.

Another problem with the Dayton Agreement, Montgomery believes, "is forcing Bosniaks and Croats to continue with their wartime agreement which formed the entity called the Federation of BiH. This is a big mistake. The Croats should have received their own entity. If you haven't noticed perhaps before, the Federation does not work, nor do most of the cantons that make it up," Montgomery writes in his opinion piece.

What we have now is a "Holy Scripture" called "Dayton", which does not work at all, nor will it work in the foreseeable future. But it cannot be changed without the consent of all three ethnic groups - and that is something that will not happen, Montgomery writes.

"And what now, asks the author of the text. The West has no other option but to continue to drive its twenty-year policy of supporting a multi-ethnic BiH based on the Dayton Agreement within its current borders on autopilot.

Incidentally, this means that as long as there is no violence or referendums on status changes, the West will not care much if BiH remains a second-rate, backward, and economically underdeveloped country whose best, smartest young people flee abroad and whose standard of living is closer to African than European," Montgomery wrote.