'Though the situation in Bosnia and in the South Caucasus is different, there are still remarkable similarities when comparing frozen conflicts.' Opinion | Hamza Karcic
When Bosnian Serb politicians announced their intent to block the functioning of state-level institutions last July, their decision plunged the country into a months-long crisis that is still ongoing. What began as essentially a boycott of state institutions turned into a far more serious assault on Bosnia's sovereignty.
An interesting twist in the current crisis is that Dodik is announcing the steps but is handing over the formal decision-making to the Republika Srpska assembly and the entity-level government. A likely reason is that he wants to both have the pretense of a collective decision but also to transfer responsibility to a collective body and make the imposition of targeted and individualised US or European sanctions on him less likely.
First, just as in the Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, separatists in Bosnia had the support of external actors in the 1990s. Without this support, the separatist project could not have been undertaken or sustained. In much the same way that external actors support separatists in South Caucasus, a similar trend was and continues to be present in Bosnia.
Fourth, as in the South Caucasus, new elites have formed in Republika Srpska after the war. Politicians, tycoons, academics, and many others have vested interests tied to the perpetuation of the status quo. The similarities notwithstanding, there are two major differences between the situation in Bosnia and in the post-Soviet frozen conflicts.
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