Bosnia ... again

Hoo boy ... as if the first time around wasn't ugly enough ...<blockquote>SARAJEVO, Bosnia -- Fourteen years after the United States and NATO intervened to stop war and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, the old divisions and hatreds are again gripping this Balkan country.

In June, the international envoy who oversees the rebuilding of Bosnia invoked emergency powers that he said were necessary to hold the country together. Although U.S. and European officials have been trying to get Bosnia to stand on its own feet for years, many Bosnian leaders say the only thing that can permanently fix their gridlocked government is for Washington to intervene -- again -- and rewrite the treaty that ended the war in 1995.

The economy is in tatters, with unemployment exceeding 40 percent. Serbs are talking openly of secession. Croats are leaving the country in droves. Religious schisms are widening. In December, street protests erupted after Bosnian Muslim school officials in Sarajevo tried to ban "Santa Claus" from delivering gifts to kindergartens.

The national government answers to three presidents, who agree on one thing: Corruption, political infighting and bureaucratic dysfunction are paralyzing the country. In May, Vice President Biden visited Sarajevo and lectured Bosnian leaders to put aside their differences. But the squabbling has only worsened since then.

Zeljko Komsic, a Croat and chairman of Bosnia's tripartite rotating presidency, said the country has increasingly hardened along ethnic lines. Even as Bosnia dreams of integrating into NATO and the European Union, its population has become more segregated than ever. </blockquote>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/22/AR2009082202234_2.html?hpid=artslot&sid=ST2009082202479

The Serb portion of the country is talking secession.

This has the potential to be a real fustercluck.

 

It's an area that's had unrest for years.
Remember, Sarajevo (I know it's the ultimate d_b) was where World War I got it's spark.

Within the past two years, a story in Stars & Stripes was touting the Black Sea, Bulgaria and surrounding area as the next big tourist destination.
That whole region, including Serbia and other countries along the Adriatic, has an awfully dangerous element to it.

 

Figure Tito must have been some kind of effective son of a bitch to keep that area in line when it was Yugoslavia.

 

That was my first thought, too. Even if it seems quiet, those tension are never bubbling too far under the surface. Had a couple friends who bugged out of there in the mid-1990s who told some gruesome stories.

It's probably a vain hope, but Bosnia is in with a shout of qualifying for the 2010 World Cup, which would be the country's first major tournament. I wonder if the precedent of Yugoslavia getting kicked out of Euro '92 would cool some people's heads.