Tensions High in the Balkans as Bosnia Votes

But some experts warn that redrawing boundaries in Kosovo along ethnic lines would spark tensions elsewhere.

In an August open letter, three former high representatives to Bosnia, diplomats who oversaw the enactment of the Dayton agreement, warned against the land swap.

“Moving borders like this will not solve divisions, it will deepen them,” the letter said.

This fear is particularly acute in Bosnia, where a semi-autonomous and Bosnian Serb-dominated entity known as the Republika Srpksa threatens to hold an independence referendum and break away from Bosnia-Herzegovina.

To win peace, the Dayton treaty approved slicing Bosnia into ethnic enclaves, and this legacy continues to be a source of contention.

Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik is close to Russia and often hosts Russian militants, according to news reports. His government recently voted to reinvestigate the Srebrenica massacre. Dodik claims it was a “staged tragedy with an aim to satanize the Serbs.”

Čolpa said: “If they try to get independence, that would cause a war. The president of the Republika Srpksa is an atomic bomb.”

A move to declare independence could draw in the Bosnian military and ignite a secession attempt by Croat communities in Bosnia.

Dragan Čović, a nationalist Croat leader in Bosnia-Herzegovina, has pushed to create an entity similar to that of the Republika Srpska based around Croats.

Jasmin Mujanović, a political scientist at Elon University in North Carolina, called Dodik and Čović “the two most prominent architects of dysfunction” in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Elsewhere, fighting could break out between Albanians and Macedonians, experts warn, and cause wider problems. Ethnic Albanian paramilitaries in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia have sought to carve out parts of Macedonia and make them part of Kosovo or Albania.

Then there’s the possibility of a terrorist attack or political assassination by Islamic extremists against Christians, and that could lead to violence against Muslims, Serwer warned.

Looming large is the presence of Russia.

“Russia now has its fingers in Bosnia too much,” Čolpa said. “Russian paramilitaries are working with the Republika Srpksa. The Russians want to show how strong they are in Europe.”

He said Russia is meddling in Macedonia and Montenegro too.

Northern Montenegro is home to ethnic Serbs and Russia has supported them, with the aim of destabilizing Montenegro, Serwer warned. Russia is supporting groups in Macedonia too.

Making matters more tense, Čolpa said, Serbia and Croatia have been building up their armies.

“It is part of a longstanding 'cold war' between the two sides,” Mujanović said in an email. Serbia and Croatia were enemies during the Balkan wars in the 1990s.

For some political analysts, the instability in Balkans is caused by outside forces vying for influence and power in the region.

“The best prospect for peace in the Balkans is that outside powers-that-be leave the region to its own devices,” said Serge Trifkovic, a foreign affairs specialist at the University of Banja Luka in the Republika Srpska, in an email.

He said that “outside meddling” harmed the Balkans during the 1990s and continues to do so.

Trifkovic said Bosnia is “as divided as ever” a quarter of a century after the Dayton agreement. He called it “a Frankenstein's monster propped up by the ‘international community’ utterly devoid of the dynamics of stable existence.”

Others blame Bosnia’s divisions on its own politicians, who stoke nationalism for their own benefit.

“The political parties are continuing the war,” complained Augustina Rahmanović-Koning, who helps run Vive Žene, a groups that brings Muslim and Orthodox Christian women together in eastern Bosnia towns.

“At this point, many people in Bosnia are in fear of a new war,” she said. “I don't believe there will be a new war, but the feelings are there.”

Elmedin Šišić, a 31-year-old café owner, wasn't worried about new conflict. “There’s not going to be a war here,” he said, shaking his head and rolling a cigarette.

But he acknowledged Bosnia has many problems, including a brain drain and a harsh tax system.

He was worried about his nation’s drift toward materialism and his government’s squashing of creativity and culture.

“They killed the rock ’n’ roll. They killed the art,” he said. “It's only capitalism — money, money, money. There’s no culture. No writers, no artists.”

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