T K Vogel — research & analysis

It may be Srebrenica’s special misfortune that to the people interested in it, it has been far more than just a small town in eastern Bosnia. Its fall in July 1995 was a great military triumph for the Bosnian Serbs, but the systematic killing of thousands of Muslim males that followed forever tainted the Serbian project of creating a separate ethnic homeland by breaking up Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Srebrenica’s fall signaled the end of the United Nations’ ill-fated humanitarian mission in Bosnia. It also prompted the United States to come up with a strategy for a military and diplomatic endgame in Bosnia, which a few months later produced the Dayton peace accords. The Dayton accords gave the Bosnian Serb entity, the Republika Srpska, far-reaching autonomy and confirmed its hold over Srebrenica.

Today, many Bosnians — though not, on the whole, the country’s Serbs — share the growing concern among international policymakers that the constitution that came as part of Dayton has outlived its usefulness. Its complex ethnic quotas and veto points have greatly complicated the country’s recovery and continue to prevent closer ties with the European Union.

 

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