In the Balkans, Europe is watching a crisis slowly unfold.
A known problem, in a known place, but now with the added prospect of Russian intervention.
Thirty years after its horrific war, Bosnia is caught in a complex and volatile dispute that includes ethnic divisions, religious rivalries, genocide denial, heartbreaking memories and the lingering suspicion that Moscow is moving things.
The past pushes you to Bosnia. It is a country shaped by centuries of ethnic and religious division, and still struggling to come to terms with its own fractured identity.
But it is modern history that is so tangible: the various scars left by three and a half years of brutal war in the 1990s. There were 100,000 deaths in a country of only four million people.
Some of these scars are surprisingly obvious. We stop at a block of flats in Sarajevo, originally built for the 1984 Winter Olympics, and look at the high side wall, pockmarked with hundreds of holes. They range from small bullet holes to yawning holes left by rockets and shells.
But these can be repaired. Bosnia’s biggest problems are the lingering trauma, the dangerous tensions that still divide the country, and the sense that it may be headed back down the path to catastrophic war. That nothing, really, has changed.
To understand how visceral these divisions are, let’s leave Sarajevo and drive a few hours. Just before you reach the border with Serbia, you will find the town of Srebrenica. It was here that more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed, by the Bosnian Serbs, in July 1995. An act of almost indescribable cruelty, led by Ratko Mladic. He assured the locals they would be safe, and then ordered a surprising wave of violence, which began, scandalously, under the eyes of United Nations troops.
Now there is a large cemetery here. A focal point for memory. What strikes you is the large number of graves here – and also the groups of family members buried together – parents and children, all killed at the same time.
Sehida Abdurahmanovic knows pain. Her husband Jakube was killed in the first days of the war. His brother, Meho, was killed during the massacre, and his remains have never been found. His 16-year-old son survived by escaping into the woods.
“I didn’t realize what was going to happen,” he tells me. “I had no idea that genocide would happen, that there would be a crime of this magnitude. If I had known, I would have run for my life and saved my children from everything that came. I believed in civilization. I made a big mistake.
“When I was thinking about my son, he told me that he never stopped thinking about us. We were lucky. He said he would have killed himself if we had died. My brother was never found and I never found his remains. I hope you find a bone to bury, that would comfort me. So I can pray.”
The guilt of survival weighs heavily on many. Sehida’s son, like so many young people, left the country and started a new life abroad: out of his class of 44 students, only four survived.
Ratko Mladic is now in prison, convicted of genocide. You might think his name would be a stain in this country; that he would be insulted by everyone. And you would be wrong.
In the nearby town of Bratunac, we are ushered into a large room, more like a chapel. Around the walls are hundreds of photographs of Bosnian Serbs who died in the war.
“This is my cousin Augustus here,” says politician Vojin Pavlovic, as we walk together. “They cut off his head and kicked him like a football. It was terrible.”
Pavlovic believes that the death of thousands of Muslims in Srebrenica, Europe’s worst massacre since the Holocaust, was not so bad. A crime, yes, but nothing more. That the man who ordered it is simply misunderstood.
“I think that Ratko Mladic is a hero and that he is not guilty of what he was accused of and convicted of,” Pavlovic tells me. There was no genocide in Srebrenica.”
Image: Ratko Mladic
For him, the legacy of the war is not about reconciliation, but about the creation and expansion of Republika Srpska.
Complaining that they are marginalized by Bosniaks, who make up about half the population, Republika Srpska talks about wanting to run its own affairs and even raise its own army.
To many people, this sounds very similar to the kind of rhetoric that led to war 30 years ago, but Pavlovic is clear in his mind: “There will be no peace in this area as long as the international community represents, defends and protects only one side. This side is the side of the Muslims.”
Back in the capital, Ljubisa Cosic welcomes us to her office with a smile. The mayor of East Sarajevo has a new office that looks into the distance. He likes to take the long view.
“The dissolution of Bosnia Herzegovina will occur if this state continues like this,” he says. “Bosnians always try to have a centralized state. They want more and more. It’s not possible. We had a war because of it.”
So could it happen again? Could Bosnia really return to conflict and division? The answer, worryingly, is a cautious “maybe”.
If Republika Srpska ever decided to pursue independence, it would need powerful supporters. As it happens, it already has a sense of kinship with Serbia, friendship with Russia.
“Personally, I love the Russians more than the Americans,” Cosic says. “We have a very, very strong historical relationship with the Russians and we believe in Russia.”
Pavlovic is even less equivocal. “NATO is a criminal organization, which can only be compared to the Third Reich as a fascist organization,” he says with a shrug.
The fear of many in Western Europe is that Russia will look for new places to foment unrest – to distract from what is happening in Ukraine and strain European unity – and that Bosnia, with its divisions and volatility, may seem the perfect candidate .
Throughout history, the Balkans have often been a hotbed of violence. Few doubt that, if the spark is ignited, it could happen again.