THE HEART OF EUROPE

If Europe does not pay enough attention to this problem it could explode in its face.
The EU is far to pre-occupied with overseas problems and forgetting its own.

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk Bosnia's "crisis" is so much talked about these days, yet so difficult to define. Bosnia is not a failed state. Not yet, at least. Instead, it is more like a zombie state. Like Afghanistan and Iraq, Bosnia has been reanimated out of conflict following external intervention. Outwardly it appears to be in possession of the institutions of democracy, but those institutions, say critics, are moribund in most respects. It was not supposed to be like this. The country's war, which occurred during the break-up of Yugoslavia, pitted the three national identities against each other - Orthodox Christian Serb against Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) and Bosniak against Catholic Croat - with many secular Bosnians from all sides fighting with the Bosniak-dominated government for the dream of a multi-ethnic state.