Paddy Ashdown, the international community's former high representative, and Richard Holbrooke, the chief architect of the 1995 Dayton Agreement, make an urgent case for greater international engagement in Bosnia.
"As a result, the suspicion and fear that began the war in 1992 has been reinvigorated. A destructive dynamic is accelerating, and Bosnian and Croat nationalism is on the rise. The recent local elections gave a fillip to nationalist parties.
This tipping point is the result of a distracted international community. While the Bush administration largely turned its back on Bosnia, the EU became deeply engaged; EU membership has been the critical lever for pressing reforms in Bosnia since it was made policy in 2003.
But the EU did not develop a coherent strategy, and by proclaiming progress where it has not been achieved, the EU has weakened not only its own influence in the country, but also the Office of the High Representative (OHR) and the international military presence (the European Union Force, Eufor, which succeeded Nato) the drivers of progress in Bosnia since Dayton."
Read the full article here in The Guardian.
-- Luke Allnutt