I recently took a couple of bus rides across Bosnia and Herzegovina - mostly through the south and east. It's the first time I've been there since 1991.
Throughout the journey I did not feel that I was in a single country. From the Croatian border to Mostar I felt that I had not even left Croatia - their flag was everywhere. A little while after Mostar I thought I was already in Serbia, with the cyrillic alphabet in general use and the Serbian flag instead of the Croatian. Seldom, except in some Muslim pockets like Gorazde, did I see the Bosnian flag. The only unifying factors were mosques on both sides and the location-anonymous BiH car registration plates.
The most absurd part of the journey was crossing a border at Neum, Bosnia's only seaside town, and one that is almost 100% Croatian. We showed our passports twice to Croatian and then BiH officials, then, half an hour later, did the whole thing again in reverse. An hour or so after that we once again showed our passports to cross into BiH again. I've crossed many borders in my life, but never like that!
Taking all that into consideration, I find it hard to see how Bosnia and Herzegovina is going to resolve its problems without some form of partition. I don't suggest partition as an answer, I merely observe the fact that a de facto division, at least as far as ordinary people are concerned, already exists unofficially.
And with the possibility of Kosovo officially separating from Serbia (which it de facto already has), how are we going to justify BiH remaining as a single country when half its population considers itself to be either Serb or Croat?
I recently took a couple of bus rides across Bosnia and Herzegovina - mostly through the south and east. It's the first time I've been there since 1991.
Throughout the journey I did not feel that I was in a single country. From the Croatian border to Mostar I felt that I had not even left Croatia - their flag was everywhere. A little while after Mostar I thought I was already in Serbia, with the cyrillic alphabet in general use and the Serbian flag instead of the Croatian. Seldom, except in some Muslim pockets like Gorazde, did I see the Bosnian flag. The only unifying factors were mosques on both sides and the location-anonymous BiH car registration plates.
The most absurd part of the journey was crossing a border at Neum, Bosnia's only seaside town, and one that is almost 100% Croatian. We showed our passports twice to Croatian and then BiH officials, then, half an hour later, did the whole thing again in reverse. An hour or so after that we once again showed our passports to cross into BiH again. I've crossed many borders in my life, but never like that!
Taking all that into consideration, I find it hard to see how Bosnia and Herzegovina is going to resolve its problems without some form of partition. I don't suggest partition as an answer, I merely observe the fact that a de facto division, at least as far as ordinary people are concerned, already exists unofficially.
And with the possibility of Kosovo officially separating from Serbia (which it de facto already has), how are we going to justify BiH remaining as a single country when half its population considers itself to be either Serb or Croat?
I recently took a couple of bus rides across Bosnia and Herzegovina - mostly through the south and east. It's the first time I've been there since 1991.
Throughout the journey I did not feel that I was in a single country. From the Croatian border to Mostar I felt that I had not even left Croatia - their flag was everywhere. A little while after Mostar I thought I was already in Serbia, with the cyrillic alphabet in general use and the Serbian flag instead of the Croatian. Seldom, except in some Muslim pockets like Gorazde, did I see the Bosnian flag. The only unifying factors were mosques on both sides and the location-anonymous BiH car registration plates.
The most absurd part of the journey was crossing a border at Neum, Bosnia's only seaside town, and one that is almost 100% Croatian. We showed our passports twice to Croatian and then BiH officials, then, half an hour later, did the whole thing again in reverse. An hour or so after that we once again showed our passports to cross into BiH again. I've crossed many borders in my life, but never like that!
Taking all that into consideration, I find it hard to see how Bosnia and Herzegovina is going to resolve its problems without some form of partition. I don't suggest partition as an answer, I merely observe the fact that a de facto division, at least as far as ordinary people are concerned, already exists unofficially.
And with the possibility of Kosovo officially separating from Serbia (which it de facto already has), how are we going to justify BiH remaining as a single country when half its population considers itself to be either Serb or Croat?
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