Violent Protests in Bosnia and Herzegovina

A student asked me about this last week, and I hadn't seen much, actually.

So now here comes this report at the New York Times, "Roots of Bosnian Protests Lie in Peace Accords of 1995":

TUZLA, Bosnia and Herzegovina — The local government headquarters here is a shell, its 12 stories charred by fire. Shards of glass tumble from its smashed windows.

But while the destruction evokes the Balkans turmoil of the 1990s, when more than 100,000 people died, it is not a result of war. Rather, Bosnians, diplomats and analysts say, it is an unintended consequence of what ended the conflict: the 1995 Dayton accords, which were negotiated under muscular diplomacy by the United States and bought nearly 20 years of peace but imposed what turned out to be a dysfunctional government structure that has impeded economic progress and left citizens increasingly angry and frustrated.

The long-simmering frustrations of Bosnians erupted a week ago not only in Tuzla but also in a dozen other towns and cities across the country, including the capital, Sarajevo, where the national presidency office bears scars, too.

Ethnic divisions fueled almost four years of war in the 1990s. Today, if there is one thing that unites many of Bosnia’s 3.8 million people — Bosniaks (or Muslims), Serbs and Croats — it is their disgust with the hydra-headed presidency and multiple layers of government that developed to appease the nationalist sentiments of all sides. But the terms of the accords were in time supposed to be replaced by a more streamlined system. They were never supposed to remain in force this long.

This impoverished industrial city of 200,000 in Bosnia’s northeast has the highest unemployment rate in the country — around 55 percent — and it was the fount of the anger that erupted last week, startling Bosnians and outsiders alike.

The system established under the Dayton accords has only helped cement “corrupt, nepotistic and completely complacent elites,” said Damir Arsenijevic, 36, a psychoanalyst who has studied and lectured in Britain, participated in Occupy protests in Oakland, Calif., and is now a prime mover in nightly Tuzla discussions about the way forward.

Workers in Tuzla had protested for months against the botched privatization of four factories, once part of a proud array of industry stretching back to pre-Communist days. Pictures showing police officers beating protesters on Feb. 6 drew crowds into the streets the next day in Tuzla, Sarajevo and two other towns where government buildings were burned, and rocks were hurled at the police.

“Our leaders do not even take it as alarming that 63 percent of young people here are jobless,” said Edin Plevljakovic, 23, a student of English literature in Sarajevo. “We have neither strong politics, nor a very potent elite,” he added. The result? “Bedlam.”

John C. Kornblum, a retired United States ambassador who drafted the Dayton accords as the diplomat Richard C. Holbrooke negotiated them, noted that the complex mechanisms they put in place were intended primarily to secure peace, but they were also supposed to be replaced in three years with a more streamlined governmental structure.

More.