The recent willingness of the leaders of Kosovo and Serbia to consider border changes has set off alarm bells in Europe and the Balkans, where ethnic and territorial disputes have often led to instability and war, and even genocide.
Although Sunday’s meeting between the President Hashim Thaci and Aleksandar Vucic ended with only an agreement to meet again in “a few weeks,” concern remains that a territorial exchange between Pristina and Belgrade will have unintended consequences across the region, most notably in Bosnia.
As a former negotiator for the 1995 Bosnian peace settlement at Dayton, Ambassador James Pardew, recently observed: “Serbia and the [Serb-run entity of] Republika Srpska in Bosnia almost certainly will start clamoring for other territorial trades,” potentially leading to the break-up of the country.
I don’t dispute these concerns. But would offer two lines of advice to all sides in this debate.
First, Belgrade, Pristina, Brussels and Washington (which has said it will not stand in the way of territorial negotiations) would do well to pay attention to the lessons of Bosnia, where entity boundaries were negotiated with great difficulty at Dayton but have done little to stabilize, let alone improve, domestic political conditions within the country.
Second, those who see a knock-on effect of a Kosovo-Serbia land swap on Bosnia – both extreme nationalists in Bosnia and those who oppose the land swap – should be aware that the territorial issues in Bosnia are not, strictly speaking, the same.
The division of Bosnia into two entities at Dayton in 1995 may have ended the war but it has never brought about political stabilityor laid the groundwork for a better internal constitutional arrangement.
Dayton has, in fact, led to an effective ad-hoc partition of Bosnia into two sub-states, linked by a very weak central government. Partition may have stopped the war but its larger objective, of rebuilding a unified Bosnia, has failed.
Indeed, this division since 1995 has sustained repeated calls for the independence of the Republika Sprska (and its possible eventual incorporation into Serbia) by Bosnian Serb nationalists and for the creation of a third entity by Bosnian Croat nationalists.
For more read the full of article at The Balkaninsight
