Reign of Terror or Rule by Fear

Politics, it is well known, thrives on unresolved problems and dead-end situations. However, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, unlike many things brought to the brink of despair in conception and execution, this claim has been perfected! 

On one hand, the government composed of SDA, HDZ, and SNSD plus Željko Komšić is the most reliable recipe for a permanent crisis, the only „political“ atmosphere in which nationalists have a reason to exist. On the other hand, the combination of a continuing crisis (especially economic) and the proven materially insatiable and never-satisfied nationalists is the ideal „ground“ for placing expensive loans from the International Bank, IMF, EBRD, and other international financial institutions most present in areas that need to be kept on a warm regime always ready for some kind of conflict. 

And let's not fool ourselves, everyone is happy and satisfied with the current status quo... The national gurus cannot thank God enough that their „peoples,“ party members and voter-sympathizers live in electorally compact communities, on nationally homogeneous territories, easy to control and maintain, reliable, long-standing, and meaningless to everyone except them... The international gurus are quite satisfied and happy to have such local subjects who will eternally say one thing and do another, thus ensuring them secure and massive bank statements and reports. In common parlance, this is called „peaceful Bosnia.“

What are Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina afraid of when, despite the International Court of Justice ruling on the joint criminal enterprise (it should stop being called JCE), they hold at least 50% of power (if not more... it could be easily determined by an ethnonational census of state officials and employees, agency directors, and presidents and members of foundation boards...), control all flows of budget money at two levels: state and federal, rule unquestionably and unchallenged in at least three cantons / counties in the FBiH and share power in another two or three... while, at the same time, such participation in the RS government does not interest them at all.

What should Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina be afraid of when, despite the International Court of Justice ruling on genocide, they possess the Republika Srpska, the only spoils from all wars initiated and waged on the territory of the former SFR Yugoslavia?

Objectively, the only ones who have reason to fear are Bosniaks. The revived nationalist appetites of Croatia and Serbia are still not satisfied, partly because the current state and situation – although irresistibly reminiscent of the state established in 1939 by the Cvetković – Maček agreement – is such only de facto... for full satisfaction, it needs to be defined de jure: entitize the Federation of BiH as Herceg-Bosnia, secede the Republika Srpska, and the Bosniaks... euthanize = consider – or make – them non-existent or give them a sense of security, cluster them into an easily controllable territorial percentage where „Muslims“ will be the majority and rule, and do everything to – partly from within, partly from outside – radicalize them and condemn them to self-destruction.

Fear does not only reign in inter-ethnic relations but, above all, within ethnic groups because any opposition to the dominant ethnonationalist narrative brings, at the very least, accusations of national betrayal, and then all other forms of direct and indirect pressure, mostly of an existential nature.

Someone will eventually have to accept the factual reality: the demographic picture of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been irreversibly (forever?!) changed; the vast majority of people still living in this country have actually fulfilled their childhood dreams: to move away from the land and onto asphalt, and no one will move them from there until they themselves decide to move to some even better asphalt; whether we like it or not, the demographic picture of Bosnia and Herzegovina will continue to change: global, historical, unimaginably large and numerous waves and flows of population movement are a reality, and it is only a matter of time – measured neither in years nor in our lifetimes – when the cliché „others“ in Annex IV of the Dayton Agreement, i.e., the Constitution of BiH, will take on entirely new connotations... Whatever we think of those people, however we feel about them or empathize with them... the only thing that makes sense from the perspective of Bosnians and Herzegovinians, however we feel or sense beneath that, is to ask ourselves: could it be that God, the Almighty, is replacing us with better versions of ourselves... granting the land we did not know how to appreciate, respect, and love to those for whom running water from the tap, a roof over their heads, a warm room, and a regular meal... are luxuries they could only dream of in their former homelands?

Actually, I wanted to ask: What even is that famous Annex VII (return of everyone to their own?!) and is there any – other than political, hypocritical, and partisan – sense in talking about it twenty or more years after the time when it should have been implemented, and no one had the courage, determination, or resolve to implement it, neither the so-called local officials nor the even more so-called international community?