Flashpoint: Bosnia

A frozen conflict with a pro-Russian side.

This reporting from France 24 is the first time I’ve heard the phrase “frozen conflict” applied to Bosnia and Hezegovina, the most trouble of the states to emerge from the breakup of Yugoslavia. This is a world map of the region.

But this is the map of the country as the residents see it - Bosniaks on one side, Serbs on the other. Serbia has been in the Kremlin’s pocket since the breakup began in the early 1990s but there are signs of strain in that relationship, as we saw in Serbian Assimilation.

I’ve been paying attention to frozen conflicts since Four Places You Have Not Heard Of. Yet.(2012) and The Fourth Frozen Zone(2014). Anywhere Putin can caper, he will.

Anyone who lived through these times has a reflexive shiver at hearing names like Sarajevo, Srebrenica, or Mostar. I do not know where Bosnia & Herzegovina are on NATO ascension but I am going to guess they are stalled due to Serbian nationalists. This is not a conflict the world needs to revisit, the Serbs may see things differently.