Do you think Bosnia and Herzegovina can actually get better or “normal”?
Posted by tipoftheiceberg1234@reddit | AskBalkans | View on Reddit | 59 comments
Idek what normal would look like for that country.
It seems like a constant uphill battle just to keep things together, like if you don’t give it your absolute all every second of the day the whole thing falls apart.
Many people have various suggestions, one country no entities, 3 entities…
Slavoj Zizek once said that partitioning the country would not be a bad idea because something something true love will never be achieved by the people who want to hate and to stop pretending like it’s getting better.
Idk, I honestly don’t know. What do you think
Loud-Tangerine-547@reddit
Ask your unelected foreign overlord Christian Schmidt if mini Yugoslavia will ever be normal
AttackHelicopterM17@reddit
Find the serb level easy
Loud-Tangerine-547@reddit
Its ok, im sure a multiethnic state in Balkans will work this time
AttackHelicopterM17@reddit
It will if others just leave it the fuck alone most ruckus in Bosnia is caused by intervention of serb and croat radikalists but its holding on by the sheer fact the people dont want war anymore.
Loud-Tangerine-547@reddit
You're so clever. Clearly it's radical to want to seperate from people who hate you and join people who don't. Serbs and Croats would like to leave. Radical, I know.
Ya man, I'm sure this time it'll work.... We should create a country where people hate each other but are forced to live together. Are you sure this isn't a reality tv show idea?....
AttackHelicopterM17@reddit
Worry about your country considering that only your population is falling off while Kosovars and Bosniaks are going up in YOUR country.Ypur precious serbia is multi ethnic aswell
Loud-Tangerine-547@reddit
You're so right. I'm worried now. Should I just convert my religion and become Bosnian? That's how it worked before right?
AttackHelicopterM17@reddit
Classic brain dead serb i was waiting for this
Loud-Tangerine-547@reddit
I guess I hit a nerve. Sorry about that.
AttackHelicopterM17@reddit
Jebem li ti mrtve u picku 👍
AttackHelicopterM17@reddit
You got a better idea that wont lead to another war condition being that ethnicities dont get masacerd. And besides isnt serbia doing the same thing with Kosovo.
Loud-Tangerine-547@reddit
Ya man. RS joins Serbia and Croats join Croatia.
AttackHelicopterM17@reddit
Kosovo joins Albania and Sandzak joins Bosnia
Loud-Tangerine-547@reddit
First smart thing I heard
Special_Entry_5782@reddit
They are extremely free to leave, they're just not free to take Bosnian land inhabited for centuries by majority Bosniaks until genocide 30 years ago with them. Which is basically the entire area near the Bosnia-Serbia border. Good luck splitting that off. Maybe Serbia can have an exclave of a few farms around Banja Luka 150 kilometers away from Serbia? Sounds like a solid idea.
Loud-Tangerine-547@reddit
So true. I actually read that Serbs scientists discovered genocide. Before that discovery, there was no genocide in the history of Balkans and everyone lives in peace. Your argument makes extremely perfect sense.
Special_Entry_5782@reddit
You didn't read the part where none of that butthurt nonsense changes anything. Serbs committed genocide 30 years ago and 90% of them don't feel any serious problem with that or are ready to admit it. And 'both sides did bad things' is not admitting shit.
Loud-Tangerine-547@reddit
Oh no, this man is bullying Serbs on the internet. There are lots of other genocides you can obsess about in the Balkans. We have a rich history.
tipoftheiceberg1234@reddit (OP)
The Dayton agreement was supposed to be temporary.
The thinking was that we’ll just sign something right now so that the war stops, and then, in a while oh idk let’s say 30 years should be enough, the people will come together and make a new one.
Well, here we are slightly over 29 years later and no one’s budged an inch.
Who knows, maybe something happens overnight and everyone changes their minds and realizes they were wrong /s
stozabiznissuka@reddit
The answer is sfrj
StamatisTzantopoulos@reddit
Βosnia maybe, Herzegovina not so sure.
tipoftheiceberg1234@reddit (OP)
I’d say Hercegovina first than Bosnia
Archaeopteryx11@reddit
No. The 21st century has taught us that nationalism, sectarianism, and ethnic hatred will never die.
SamiTheAnxiousBean@reddit
and are pretty much the only thing slowing us down
MaintenanceFederal99@reddit
Not really, but for sure one of major issues, especially in ex-Yugoslav countries since ethnic nationalism usually involves historic revisionism and trying to make your neigjbour have as harder time as possible instead of improving each other.
Archaeopteryx11@reddit
It’s crazy to me how bad Romania used to be compared to Yugoslavia, but because we didn’t have any of the ethnic problems and Romania is much more homogenous, Romania is now doing much better on average.
Archaeopteryx11@reddit
You forgot good old corruption.
AggravatingIssue7020@reddit
Thanks for the external contributions, as clearly the Serbs, croats and Muslims and NATO couldn't fix it, so any approach might stick.
Bosnia is a very fucked up place, quasi lawless in any region and the politicians would be serving prison sentences in any half way decent country. I mean it's Balkans, sure, but it's 50 times worse than Serbia and Croatia.
Long way to go, Banja Luka area has still many many houses damaged from the war, can't speak about other regions, but there's apparently no money to support a proper state, no jobs, that's what you want first there.
If people have food and a jib a social system a roof, then nobody gaf who believes in which deity
Damircati@reddit
To be fair Bosnia is not doing much worse than other countries in Balkans, even after you take the politics into consideration. Everyday life for normal people doesn't differ from any other countries in the surrounding, sure there are political tensions, but there are no major tensions between ethnic groups in real life.
It's a highly decentralised country, with two entities and 10 cantons in FBiH, everyone has their own government and I don't see how anyone would profit from further partition.
That being said collaboration on the state level should be better, but politicians from Republika Srpska are constantly trying to undermine the central government, in order to achieve some petty goals, even though it would be better for Serbs as well to have a stable country with a government that works towards joining the European Union. Unfortunately for them the American sanctions are slowly starting to work, so I'm optimistic regarding the future, I just hope that they won't drag regular people into their mud.
Frederico_de_Soya@reddit
Stop trying to centralize the country it’s not going to happen. We already had that and it didn’t work.
MISTER_WORLDWIDE@reddit
It worked fine for you between 1945 - 1991 when Serbs were extremely overrepresented in political positions. The time it “didn’t work” for you was when political representation was more equal and you ended up launching an all out genocidal war against everyone who wasn’t a Serb within six months.
Thankfully, the JNA is long gone and the Serb population in BiH is too old and too jaded to be capable of fighting anymore wars. Thank god for Mile Ronhill.
Loud-Tangerine-547@reddit
You seem confused. You don't like Serbs but you also don't want them to leave? Seems logical forsure
MISTER_WORLDWIDE@reddit
Who said I dislike Serbs? I praised the president of RS in the final sentence.
Imaginary_String_814@reddit
https://www.intellinews.com/parade-of-serbian-army-troops-in-bosnia-sparks-outrage-among-muslims-332860/
MISTER_WORLDWIDE@reddit
Serbian academy cadets allowed into the country by the sitting government spark outrage!
Imaginary_String_814@reddit
i am sure you did get my point
MISTER_WORLDWIDE@reddit
I didn’t, no. If you are saying Serbia will send troops, then that’s hilarious because Serbia doesn’t have the troops to send nor the will to send Serbians to die in Bosnia.
Should that happen, though. You will see many Serbs switch their flair to Austria- if you catch my drift.
Loud-Tangerine-547@reddit
Bosnia should integrate these guys into a unified federal army. I'm sure that'll work good.
FyLap@reddit
Ahh the fine attitude that will unite the country. Excellent work
Damircati@reddit
The country can't be centralised, based on the constitution all three parties must agree on that, and as a matter of fact it's probably the most decentralised country in Europe.
The problem is that the politicians from RS don't respect even the few state authorities guaranteed by the Dayton Agreement.
-Koltira-@reddit
All the money goes into Sarajevo and Banja Luka lul
Archaeopteryx11@reddit
Croatia, Romania, and Bulgaria are all doing much better than BiH. I think BiH is doing about as well as Albania and North Macedonia.
ExtremeProfession@reddit
They're all EU countries and even Bulgaria struggled to overtake B&H with gross wages until Q1 2024.
Bosnia is better than Albania and especially Kosovo in many metrics, somewhere between North Macedonia and Serbia. The point of the original comment was that the country isn't economically dysfunctional at all and is developing at the same pace as the rest of Western Balkans. There is also no reason for it not to be s part of the EU when and if they decide to expand with the entire WB at once.
Archaeopteryx11@reddit
Yes. All WB countries should be part of the EU as soon as possible. Hoping for the best for all of our countries.
GreatshotCNC@reddit
Only when the politicians pushing divisive, nationalistic agendas lose their power.
MaintenanceFederal99@reddit
They will be replaced with new nationalists because majority of population in each of ethnicity is extremelly nationalistic. It's not just politicians, but people themselves.
MaintenanceFederal99@reddit
All three ethnicities will continue blaming each other and voting nationalists in majority. It's deadlock situation with no apparant solution then just leaving it how it is right now.
LinuxLeftist69@reddit
When the morons die yeah (corrupt politicians and nationalists exploiting people for their gain)
AttackHelicopterM17@reddit
They will just be replaced by the new gen retards, unfortunetly actually capabble people never get power here
LinuxLeftist69@reddit
In that case, Bosnia is fucked
SamiTheAnxiousBean@reddit
I mean granted, Serbia Is almost singlehandedly the reason they're in this state
Imaginary_String_814@reddit
you have basically 3 different ethnicities/identities who only work togheter if it benefits its own interest
still seperation isnt on the table and just further complicate things in the region. Also i doubt that Covic nor Dodik want to lose all their power.
Christian Schmidt is also further complicating things since he is using his power in the interest of bosnian Croats. He literally changed some laws during the elections and is trying to overturn a court decision, wich is ridicilious. He is advocating for ethnic criteria in the leader elections.
Bosnia needs a huge political reform where each side can keep its autonomy. The spending is ridiclious and further true reconciliation has to happen in the whole region, the hate in the region is still unmatched in europe.
tipoftheiceberg1234@reddit (OP)
Yes. The laws must be applied equally regardless, but I do understand the plight of the Bosnian Croats.
I don’t excuse unjust behaviour in their favour, but I do understand why might one do it.
The hate is so deeply rooted - many people openly admit they would go to war to serve their “people’s” interests. Unfortunate that violence is at the forefront of their heads.
polecatsky@reddit
Can you provide more context? What’s with BIH if we compare it to other Balkan countries? (Bulgaria for example)
tipoftheiceberg1234@reddit (OP)
People are not consciously emancipated here and are literally blinded by religion. The bureaucracy is founded in such a way that’s supposed to give everyone equal representation - which creates an enormous number of jobs that saturate and overcomplicate the system (hence why you have to wait like 2 months for papers while you move).
We aren’t extremely poor, we have to eat (most of us), but that’s only because our whole economy functions under a protectorate. Take that away, and it’s over. These people couldn’t get together to save their life.
Education is archaic, nationally divided (two schools one roof is not uncommon here), it’s not easy to find a job here and the jobs that you can find offer an unacceptable wage even for doctors, that’s why we have the biggest exodus of young people in Europe (I think we even beat Ukraine).
And the ethnic tensions are a real thing. They scare us with war every now and then around election times and these ethnic tensions are so strong they have successfully transferred onto the younger generations.
It makes it so that the system doesn’t change because people don’t want it to change, as changing how stuff is might give the other guy a bit more power over me, and my (insert person) died during the war in this country because of his people.
I’m not even being dramatic or anything. It’s just really like that.
ExtremeProfession@reddit
Bosnia is economically functioning rather well, in fact not any worse than other WB countries, solid GDP growth which would be better with proper leadership which no one has.
dev_imo2@reddit
I don’t think in the 21st century a country can be normal if it’s divided by religion or ethnicity. There’s always going to be a politician to blame “insert group” for his failures. In reality it’s because they have nothing else to offer.
Infinite_Procedure98@reddit
The ideal to me is cantonization à la Switzerland. Each of the 3 blocks are too strong to be assimilated (and it would be a bad thing). In Switzeraland every canton have their language and customs and religion, despite what is generally believed they are not multicultural, and they share prosperity. So should Bosnians do, and share burek.
All other ideas are to me bad: the status quo is somehow an economic asphyxiation, but should be improved, not botched-up. Bosniaks should stop trying to straighten authority over Republika Srpska, it will just lead to secession. And in case of secession, geographical territoriality would be a headache to everyone, and it's not even sure Serbia would be entusiastic to unite with Srpska. Moreover, if croatians from the Bosniak-Croatian federation decide further to unite with Croatia, Bosniaks will be enclavized like palestinians and also landlocked (Neum is Croatian-inhabited afaik).
So in my naive mind, the best would be if every of these good peole accept their status quo and large subsidiarity (decisions taken at a local level as much as possible) and maybe in 50 years due to prosperity they will stop hating each other.
Economic7374@reddit
It won't lead to secession, I don't think you realize how fucked the bosnian serbs are without bosnia. The serb republic cannot survive as an independent country due to the heavy amount of sanctions that the ruling politicians have. Serbia won't unite, not only because of Kosovo, but because Dodik and his gang won't have any power (and make a lot less money). Dodik only wants to be at the top, if he united with his beloved fatherland he'd be no more than a piece of dog shit stuck under the foot of Serbia