What Went Wrong?

Last week I wrote a rather personal account on how I see latest developments in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The story was about people who refuse to live in the present moment, but dwell in the past or future times, carrying along ghosts of their past horrors and traumas.

I said that after years of progress after the war, I felt that tide was turning for worse once again. It seemed to me that day after day, local officials, local media and local people alike were waking up old ghosts and instigating new tensions and animosities.

My best confidant and main editor-in-chief (read my wife) said the story was incomplete. She said it lacked the “Why?” or “What went wrong?” part.
There is no single answer to that million-dollar question and there is nobody to singlehandedly claim responsibility for this situation. Rather, it is a combination of many political, sociological, psychological and other elements both in the country and abroad.

Interestingly enough, 18 years after the breakup of former Yugoslavia and 14 years after the end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, local and international experts and ordinary people alike, still cannot agree over the exact set of reasons for the ongoing crisis in Bosnia and the rest of the Balkans. If the cause for the illness cannot be identified, then how can we hope to find a proper cure?

Some believe that Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik is the main culprit with his raging Serb nationalism and relentless attacks on Bosnia’s central institutions and international agencies.

Some blame the leader of the Islamic Community Mustafa Ceric, Haris Silajdzic or some other Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) leader for monopolizing Bosnia for Bosniaks and inaugurating Muslim fundamentalism in the heart of Europe.

Some charge Bosnian Croat leaders and their endless struggle for the third, Croat entity.

Some accuse the leader of the opposition Social Democratic Party, SDP, Zlatko Lagumdzija, for wiping out the last traces of hope that SDP may be a decent alternative to national parties.

Some see the biggest fault on the side of the EU, US and other international diplomats and organizations and their bewildered and ineffective moves lacking any strategy or plan.

Pending with whom you talk and whether he/she is from Banja Luka, Mostar, Sarajevo, Brussels or Washington DC, a different combination of these and/or other predicaments are blamed for the political deadlock in which Bosnia and Herzegovina finds itself now.

All these claims and charges may carry a larger or lesser degree of truth, but there are few more important elements that have contributed to this situation.
One crucial overarching element, which is directly linked with many Balkan predicaments, is famous (or infamous) Balkan mentality. It excels in love, but stands out even more so in hate. It is good for jokes and great for partying.
Yet it shows major flaws when it comes to the issues such as self management, personal responsibility and accountability.
In line with the still predominately socialist Balkan mentality, most people do not believe that they are in the driver’s seat of their own lives. They do not believe that they can change anything, so why bother trying at all.
Many ordinary people seem not to understand that local, cantonal, entity or state governments are – or at least should be – their service-providers, paid for from taxes on their own salaries. Instead people often behave like governments are God-given and should be treated accordingly: you can bitch and moan about them occasionally but you cannot change them.
The best example of this peculiar phenomenon can be seen the day after any Bosnian elections. Immediately after voting for their preferable municipal, cantonal, district, entity and/or state representatives, most people proceed immediately to blaming and shaming, slashing and bashing the very politicians they have voted for. Even greater tirade is reserved politicians whom they voted against.

That belittling relation continues for another four years in which people use every coffee, party, wedding, funeral and other social gatherings to criticize their own representatives. Yet few of them do anything concretely and pro-actively to influence and direct their political representatives. Usual excuse for not even attempting anything besides usual rap is – it’s pointless, I cannot change anything.

This sort of attitude spreads also to most of media, academia and NGO sector.

Many accuse media that with inflammatory, unprofessional and ethnically and/or politically-biased reporting, they only contribute to the very situation they criticize.

There is no much difference with a major part of local NGOs or academia. Little is done outside of pompous but often inconsequential projects heftily financed by the international community. Words like voluntarism or public interest are not in their dictionaries.

Meanwhile, members of the alleged crème-de-la-crème of Bosnia’s future intelligentsia exchange nauseatingly rude, primitive and derogatory messages on one of the popular chat rooms, leaving many readers with bitter taste in the mouth and serious concerns about the future of such a country.

Bosnia’s politicians respond to all this in kind. Since nobody expects them to be accountable for their political actions, they do exactly that – show no accountability and responsibility for their deeds. Since everybody anticipates that they are involved in corruption and crime, they again deliver and many of them end up to their necks in that very corruption and crime.

And then, the next elections come and the history repeats itself. Voters vote for same-ol’–same-ol’ leaders, then people, media, academia and NGOs move on immediately to belittle politicians. Then politicians respond in kind and the vicious circle continues.

It seems to me that after several years in which this country and its people appeared to be moving forward, this vicious circle has started once again sometime after 2005. It really doesn’t matter whether it was Dodik, Silajdzic, US and its “April package” or somebody else who has started it. What matters is that the country, its politicians, media, academia, NGOs and people themselves, seem to be running full throttle while racing each other to the bottom. And what happens then?

I could understand and even maybe try to accept that for whatever reason people in one country decide that they are tired and fed up with the given territorial, constitutional and national arrangements and decide to undo and divide their country. Yet what I cannot understand and accept is when people claim to be working for the benefit of their nations, while at the same time dooming their ethnic groups and the whole country by pumping their own pus, acids and deadly poisons into the very society they live in.

I thought that I have said everything there was to be said about what I see as a dire prospect of this country, region and the people that live in it.

Yet on a second thought, I realized that this blog must not end up on such a grim and critical note. If it would, then I would be not that much different from the people and behavior I have decided to criticize.

So I started thinking in medical terms. What if we view Bosnia and Herzegovina as a real physical body? What if we compare its political crisis with a chronic infection and its people with body’s immune system?

When a wound is infected, pus is body’s attempt to heal. Bacteria produces toxins, body reacts by producing pus, temperature and pain so we pay attention to it. If the infection goes unnoticed or if it’s not treated properly, it can turn into a deadly cancer.

Viewed from that angle, some of the latest developments in this country still look ugly to me, but at least I can see some brighter perspective and higher reason for everything that has been happening lately.

The pus that many parts of the Bosnia and Herzegovina society have been releasing lately from this perspective may be understood as a warning signal that is being sent out.

Maybe we are witnessing final stages of a long illness that was wrongly treated over generations. I believe that the body and its immune system still have a chance to overpower the infection before it becomes a terminal cancer. I hope that the immune system has not become so weak and disillusioned so that it will eventually allow the infection to spread and kill the body by itself.

Another problem is that the immune system – the ability to self healing – is being hampered with too many external experimental and a hasty, superficial attempt to help. Foreign doctors seem to be overdosing the patient with strong painkillers and wrong antibiotics. Yet they apparently failed to clean the wound and identify what has been causing it in the first place.

This medical comparison offers a simple and logical answer; the body will not heal until we do not find and heal the very source of the infection and enhance immune system to deal with the problem.

Enhancing awareness of our own individual roles in designing and creating future of Bosnia and Herzegovina is the first serious step towards discovery of a true remedy.

I hope that each of us will shake off apathy and indolence and start considering our own individual roles in the healing process.

Be the change you want to see around you, as the great man Ghandi once said.