The bitter memory of the Bosnian conflict (6 April 1992-14 December 1995) still burns. The nightmarish vision that this week visited Bosnia, including the capital Sarajevo, has its roots in the ethnically divided tiny Balkan country's past civil war and the clumsy manner in which the former Yugoslav republic's socialist economy was dismantled and its state-owned industries privatised. Protesters set the presidential palace ablaze. Riot police were deployed to no avail. Lodged in government buildings, the protesters targeted official property in the towns of Zenica, Mostar and Travnik. In the northern Bosnian town of Brcko, demonstrators even took the mayor hostage, but released him after he pleaded for his life. Nobody can deny that the protesters have bottle. And there are legion of problems to take issue with in the contemporary ex-Yugoslav country. Bosnia has the highest unemployment rate in Europe, at roughly 40 per cent. Privatisation that followed the end of communism and the 1992-95 Civil War produced a handful of tycoons, but almost wiped out the middle class and sent many workers into abject poverty. The single gravest error is the downplaying by the authorities of Bosnia's untenable joblessness rate, and the imposition of austerity measures on an embittered and impoverished population. Lay-offs were de rigueur. Poverty is endemic in the ex-Yugoslav tenuous political entity. One in five of Bosnia's four million inhabitants live under the poverty line. The average monthly salary is a mere $571. Unemployment is widely put at more than 40 per cent, given Bosnia's so-called “grey economy,” although the official jobless rate is 27.5 per cent. No one is surprised by the protests involving thousands of people, spreading from Tuzla to Sarajevo, Mostar, Zenica and Bihac, and that rocked the country. They were prompted by workers laid off in Tuzla because of the past collapse of four privatised formerly state-owned companies. General elections are due in October in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Yet the troubled country has now witnessed a week of unprecedented unrest. The crisis has brought about recriminations from the European Union. Hopes of Bosnia joining the EU now seem to have been dashed. The unrest is considered the worst the country has seen since the 1992-95 war that killed over 100, 000 people following Yugoslavia's dissolution. The current protests in turn will make Bosnia's precarious political setup even less salient. Daunting as it sounds, it is easy to miss the real meaning and significance of such nationwide rage. Protests first broke out in the industrial city of Tuzla, one of ex-Yugoslavia's main manufacturing centres, last Wednesday when unpaid workers from four former-state owned companies took to the streets demanding back pay, and an end to job losses and corruption. In desperation, Nermin Niksic, Prime Minister of Bosnia's autonomous region of the Bosniak-Croat Federation, accused “hooligans” of creating chaos. What Niksic missed was that striking workers are not hooligans; they are fighting for their civil rights. This is a most inopportune moment for politicians to fall out with workers. A greater risk to public safety in Bosnia comes from urban criminal gangs who will undoubtedly take advantage of the chaotic situation in a country awash with weapons. Authorities in former Yugoslavia's industrial hub of Tuzla, now part of Bosnia, ordered schools to close last Friday, fearing more anti-government protests over high joblessness rates and indiscriminate privatisation programmes and the unscrupulous behaviour of the billionaires who took the formerly state-owned factories over. But what constitutes decisive action in the Bosnian context? One thing is certain; the Bosnian authorities will be shot at from all sides even as protesters sack government buildings and take advantage of years of political inertia and official incompetence. The authorities have reacted in an awkward fashion. The protesters are fearless, facing volley after volley of tear gas, and after being hounded by special dog units, protesters set tires and rubbish dumps on fire. Mercifully, the ethnic fissures that divide Bosnia-Herzegovina have so far not resurfaced. According to the 1991 census, 44 per cent of the Bosnian population considered themselves Muslim (Bosniak), 32.5 per cent Serb and 17 per cent Croat, with six per cent describing themselves as Yugoslav. It is widely believed that the 1991 figures remain roughly the same as today's. The European Union has been severely critical of Bosnia's record of reconciliation among the various ethnic groups. EU member states voted to cut aid to Bosnia over the country's failure to change its constitution to give ethnic minorities more rights. The decision means Bosnia faces a drop in funding this year of $62 million. A financial aid package to run from next year until 2020 has also been placed in jeopardy. The predicament of the ostracised ethnic and religious groups that do not belong to any of the three major groups (Muslim Bosniaks, Orthodox Christian Serbs and Roman Catholic Croats) is regarded as an ignominious retreat from the hard fought for democratic dispensation of post-independence Bosnia. Minorities not deemed “constituent peoples” are barred from running for either the presidency or parliament. In 2009, the European Court of Human Rights issued a ruling that this discriminated against other ethnic groups — in particular, Jewish and Roma Bosnians. Yet, today this is the least of Bosnia's politicians' concerns. The former Ottoman colony that was incorporated into Yugoslavia was widely seen as a Muslim enclave, and yet today it is a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious “nation” aspiring to EU membership. Long forgotten are the days when the Bosniaks and Croats allied themselves against the Republika Srpska in 1994. The traditional rivalry between the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat entities within Bosnia is no longer a key political factor, even though Bosnia's Croats envy their coreligionists in Croatia who have joined the EU. The Yugoslav People's Army officially left Bosnia and Herzegovina on 12 May 1992, and an unrelenting power struggle ensued. Jihadists from numerous Muslim nations flocked to Bosnia to defend their coreligionists. Serbia intervened militarily and NATO pitched in with a hitherto unknown vehemence in Europe on the side of the Muslim Bosniaks. But that, as they say, is history. Observers note that protests have remained largely confined to the Croat-Muslim Bosniak half of Bosnia. Yet, in an unprecedented show of solidarity, hundreds of people gathered in the capital of the Bosnian Serb part of the country, Banja Luka. The scars of war are still visible in Bosnia. The country is curiously composed of two semi-autonomous “mini-states”. The weaker politically of the two represents ethnic Serbs, and the more powerful one is shared by Bosnian Muslims and Croats. In a most precarious political compromise, the two semi-autonomous regions are united under a parliament and three-member presidency. The arrangement is not particularly good coalition politics. And, certainly not when the economy is in shambles. Workers rights as opposed to ethnic strife is the overriding political priority of contemporary Bosnia. The change in direction is welcome but will not work wonders anytime soon.
