Bosnian election campaigns are not fought, as other countries’ are, on issues of employment, healthcare, or education. Its politicians do not sweep to power on promises of shorter waiting lists in hospitals, or on commitments to balance the budget. No, Bosnian elections are a different beast; the topic that dominates above all others is the constitutional settlement, the question of precisely how the country should be run and, more importantly, precisely who should run it.

The country’s constitution is still the Dayton Agreement, the compromise that finally ended the war, that was fought over bitterly on a frigid US Air Force base in the winter of 1995. It was only ever meant to be a temporary solution; nobody really believed that that Bosnia, fifteen years on, would still have a constitution thrashed out at a peace conference, written in English, formulated by Americans.

But it does; and so the country is still divided, split into the two entities that were the only acceptable solution in 1995. One, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is populated mostly by Muslim Bosniaks and Catholic Croats; the other, the Republika Srpska, is overwhelmingly Orthodox Serb. It is this clumsy and unworkable arrangement that, every four years, becomes the focus of bitter arguments among rival politicians.

Some are like the current Bosniak member of the presidency, Haris Silajdžić, who would like to see the entities abolished, replaced with a pluralistic, democratic state — a state in which, not coincidentally, the Bosniaks as the largest ethnic group would wield the greatest power. Others are like the current Prime Minister of the Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik; he wants the opposite extreme, a system in which it was the central government that was abolished and both entities were granted independence, functioning entirely separately.

It is this divide which grips the Bosnian political system, and doubly so in election season. It is simultaneously a truly divisive issue and a convenient diversion behind which to hide: why be held accountable for your failure to build roads, repair railways, or provide adequate healthcare, when you can simply point to the other entity or to the central government when the time comes for your reelection? Faced with a political divide this intractable, the status quo — equally unpalatable to all — prevails; and so, elections become a farcical process, a token gesture of ethnic affiliation that leaves the population apathetic and uninvolved.

The emergence of Fahrudin Radončić, some might argue, has subverted this, and promises a change from the norm, an election free from the same old divisions. But, if it is even a change, it is hardly for the better; the multi-millionaire property tycoon and media magnate has more than a whiff of the Berlusconi about him, with all the concomitant controversies. You wouldn’t get that impression from Bosnia’s most popular daily newspaper, Dnevni Avaz, though, which fawns incessantly over Radončić — and which Radončić, coincidentally, happens to own. If Bosnia swaps the politics of ethnic division for the politics of the oligarch, will it really be better off?

When they fill in their ballots this weekend, then, Bosnians will be faced with the same unpalatable choices they have been faced with for the last fifteen years; and so, a decade and a half after the war, Bosnia remains in a quagmire of its own politicians’ making, unable to change, facing another four years of the same.

Background

Bosnia’s constitution is still formed primarily by the Dayton Agreement, the peace agreement that ended the 1992–1995 war. Under the constitution, the country is split into two so-called “entities”: the primarily Bosniak (Muslim) and Croat (Catholic) Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the primarily Serb (Orthodox Christian) Republika Srpska. Each entity enjoys considerable autonomy, with its own parliament, police force, and other institutions; the central government, conversely, was made deliberately weak to better facilitate power sharing.

Tensions between Bosnia’s three ethnic groups remain high, and power sharing in government is a necessity. This is most apparent in the setup of the country’s presidency: the body has three seats, one Bosniak, one Croat, and one Serb, each of which holds the chairmanship of the presidency for a rotating eight month term. That means that for each four year period between elections, each ethnicity will be represented as head of state for a perfectly equal sixteen months.

Key Issues

Since the war, Bosnian election campaigns have typically been dominated by bitter arguments over the country’s constitutional future, and 2010 has been no exception.

At one extreme, there are figures like Haris Silajdžić — currently the holder of the Bosniak seat on the Presidency — who want to abolish the two entities and create a single, pluralistic state; at the other, there are figures like Milorad Dodik — currently Prime Minister of the Republika Srpska, and candidate for President of the Republika Srpska — who want to see the two entities granted full independence. Reconciling these two extremes has so far proved impossible, and has been the biggest problem in Bosnian politics.

The economy has also proved an important issue. Much of Bosnia’s infrastructure remains un-repaired following the war, let alone updated for the twenty-first century. Officially, unemployment in Bosnia is forty per cent; though the existence of a substantial grey economy means the figure is more likely around twenty-five per cent, that’s still a dreadfully high figure.

EU membership remains a far-off dream for Bosnia — in contrast to its neighbours, Serbia and Croatia — but high on the list of priorities for the incoming government will be continue the progress towards visa liberalisation, allowing Bosnians to travel visa-free into the Schengen Zone. Such liberalisation, as well as bringing its own benefits, is seen as an early step on the road to full membership of the EU.

Key Figures

Haris Silajdžić — Party for Bosnia and Herzegovina (SBiH) — standing for presidency. Current holder of the Bosniak seat on the presidency, and was Foreign Minister during the 1992–1995 war. Strong critic of the current constitution; wants to see a pluralistic state created, with no entities.

Nebojša Radmanović — Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) — standing for presidency. Currently the Serb member of the presidency, and a member of Milorad Dodik’s party. Will likely win big simply by association with Dodik, in what will surely be a bumper year for the SNSD.

Željko Komsić — Social Democratic Party (SDP) — standing for presidency. Current holder of the Croat seat on on the presidency. One of the few politicians in Bosnia to run a multiethnic campaign, his popularity among both Bosniaks and Croats secured him election in 2006 and will likely do so again.

Fahrudin Radončić — Union for a Better Bosnia and Herzegovina (SBB-BiH) — standing for presidency. Media magnate, property tycoon, self-styled Berlusconi figure and attractor of almost constant controversy. 2010 marks Radončić’s first foray into politics: with the uncritical backing of his newspaper Dnevni Avaz, the most popular in Bosnia, and with a platform of economic renewal and jobs creation, he certainly stands a chance of unseating Silajdžić.

Bakir Izetbegović — Party of Democratic Action (SDA) — standing for presidency. Son of Alija Izetbegović, the wartime president, Izetbegović junior has been dogged by allegations of involvement in organised crime, though he denies this. The SDA, erstwhile stalwarts of Bosniak politics from the first multiparty elections in Yugoslavia, face an uphill struggle in attempting to regain the presidential seat they lost to Silajdžić in 2006.

Milorad Dodik — Alliance of Independent Social Democrats — standing for President of the Republika Srpska. A divisive figure but a canny political operator, Dodik is incredibly popular in the Republika Srpska and his election looks almost a formality. Formerly a moderate, courted by the west in preference to Radovan Karadžić, he formerly advocated only increased autonomy for the Republika Srpska; recently, though, he has become increasingly public about his desire to see it granted full independence, especially following the recent ICJ decision on Kosovo.

The first entry there—A Backdrop—gives a brief outline of how I first came to be interested in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the sway it has held on me ever since.

I settled into a seat in the darkened room, separated from the trial chamber only by semi-darkened and soundproofed glass. I must admit, I found the occasion oddly exciting: yes, it was an every-day occurrence for the members of the court, the witnesses, the defendants, but it was a tremendous novelty for me—here I was, just metres away from an actual trial at the actual ICTY.

I was the only spectator. The hubbub from the beginning of the Karadžić trial had died down, the guard told me, and now not even he could draw capacity crowds. The guard’s handgun and nightstick belied a friendly and personable nature, and a palpable boredom: it was late afternoon by that time, and I had the feeling I was the only person who had turned up to the main trial chamber all day. He seemed to relish the conversation, and with the court seemingly occupied with procedural matters—almost as unintelligible as they were unexciting—I did too, finding them a welcome diversion from the anticlimactic proceedings. Almost as soon as we had eased into conversation, though, the sound from the courtroom—piped into the gallery through a series of speakers—cut out: the court had entered private session, to discuss matters unsuitable for us outsiders. So these were the moments that produced those reams of “(REDACTED)” in the court’s transcripts! I tried desperately to lip-read, but to no avail. “Courtroom three is still in open session, if you’d like to go there,” the guard ventured after a few minutes of awkward silence. Why not, I thought?

And so the pantomime began again. Another guard was called; my new friend couldn’t accompany me across the building, since to do so would be to leave the viewing gallery guarded by only the two guards with the metal detector—clearly, an unacceptable risk. Once the next guard arrived, it was through the metal detectors again, through the foyer, into a warren of corridors and stairs that led to the court’s offices for administrative staff. Eventually, we met yet another guard and, feeling more and more like a defendant, I was transferred into his supervision. He led me to this courtroom’s cramped viewing gallery, only two seats wide with one already occupied. My companion was a sharply dressed and silent man scribbling furiously in a notepad, who didn’t even look up to acknowledge my presence; I slipped on the translation headphones in the dark and sunk into my seat, hoping that this session would be more fruitful.

The trial I’d chanced upon was that of Vlastimir Đorđević, a Serbian on trial for the intimidation, murder and ethnic cleansing of Kosovan Albanians. Though Đorđević himself wasn’t present, a witness was undergoing cross-examination from the prosecution. The witness was a commander of the Serbian MUP (Ministarstvo Unutrašnjih Poslova, the Ministry of Internal Affairs) at the time of the massacre at Podujevo, in which nineteen Albanian civilians were murdered. The MUP allegedly covered up the massacre, perpetrated by the Serbian paramilitary group the Scorpions, but this witness ran rings around the prosecutor and easily deflected the tame cross-examination—denying even those statements which he had made on record, and generally pursuing a strategy of obstruction and frustration.

It left me feeling disheartened, and no more confident of the ICTY’s effectiveness than I had been after seeing first Slobodan Milošević and then Radovan Karadžić succeed in protracting their trials and frustrating their prosecutors. Nevertheless, it was a tremendously interesting—and enjoyable—experience. There’s a reason, I think, that television is filled with so many courtroom dramas: here, otherwise dry and sterile judgements come alive, made flesh by the uncertainty, the unpredictability, the adversarial sparring between prosecution and defence. Before long I found myself rooting for the prosecutor as though I was at a boxing match, having to resist the urge to cheer whenever he landed a blow or gasp when he himself was on the ropes. It makes for engaging viewing, but the real draw was the realisation that history was unfolding and being documented before my very eyes, that these people were determining the truth, the truth that would enter the annals of history. It may only have been a minor event in a minor trial, but it didn’t matter: I was there.

Serbia’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community certainly thought so. In July 2001, they made the brave decision to host Belgrade’s first ever pride parade, an event that they hoped would symbolise how a country that had spent the previous decade riven by extreme religious nationalism could progress, could heal, could forge for itself a new and inclusive future.

Even before the parade, though, it was clear that such healing was far from universal. Nationalist groups leafletted Belgrade, declaring the marchers “degenerates” and “whores”; threats of violence and murder were made against the parade’s organisers. They organisers were unbowed, however. These were precisely the attitudes they were trying to counter: they would not be coerced into halting their march by the very extremists who had marginalised them for so long. There would be an outcry, of course, but wasn’t that inevitable as Serbia came to terms with its own diversity?

Even the most paranoid among the organisers, though, could not have predicted the scale and intensity of the disapproval that lurked within Serbian society. On the day of the parade almost 2,000 thugs converged on the crowd, charging at them with a terrible violence. “Serbia is for Serbians, not for homosexuals!” came the chants, as fists and feet sent the parade scattering, searching in vain for cover.

The police presence was virtually nonexistent: just fifty officers, none of whom were equipped with riot gear, were deployed to protect the parade. When the marchers found sanctuary in the student cultural centre, the building was assailed with a barrage of rocks and concrete; so too was the headquarters of the Socijaldemokratska unija (“Social Democratic Union”) party, one of the few in Serbia that then supported gay rights. Only when the anti-gay protesters turned on them were the police willing to use force.

In the aftermath of the parade and its destruction, the response from Serbia’s politicians and public figures was virtually nonexistent; those who did respond did little to dispel the notion that they, implicitly at the least, sympathised with the actions of the anti-gay protesters.

Boško Buha, Belgrade’s police chief, was forthright in his disapproval: not for those who disrupted the parade with violence, though, but for those who had organised the parade in the first place. “As a society we are not mature enough to accept such demonstrations of perversity,” he said, in a remark that betrayed a distressing self-awareness.

Even Zoran Đinđić, the then-Prime Minister and a centrist, could not bring himself to decry outright the anti-gay forces. “It’s too early to stand this test of tolerance in a country that has been in isolation for so long, and which has… a repressive patriarchal culture,” he said. “I’m afraid it will take us some time to reach [the] highest level of tolerance.”

In 2009, protesters tried for the second time to host a pride parade in Belgrade. The political climate had changed much since 2001: Boris Tadić, the president, was far more moderate and tolerant than the president of the FRY in 2001, Vojislav Koštunica; the wars of the 1990s were less vivid in the public consciousness, and political continuity from the 1990s had essentially faded.

At first, things looked hopeful. Interior minister Ivica Dačić promised publicly that the police would protect the parade and ensure that the events of 2001 were not repeated; Belgrade’s mayor, Dragan Đilas, spoke of the necessity for “everyone to feel safe” in Belgrade, and announced that homophobic graffiti would be targeted for removal by council workers.

As the day of the parade drew closer, though, the situation deteriorated. Posters and graffiti appeared across Belgrade; the most popular slogan bore the ominous warning “We are waiting for you”. Extreme nationalist groups like Obraz and Movement 1389 printed thousands of fliers and posters, and threatened to recreate the events of 2001 in even greater numbers. The church issued a statement comparing the parade to “Sodom and Gomorrah”.

Fearful for public safety, the previously supportive authorities backed down; the event was moved from the centre of Belgrade, which in practical terms meant cancellation. Though no blood was spilled, the anti-gay forces had achieved as decisive victory as in 2001; eight years later, Serbia’s attitudes had not, it seemed, progressed at all.

To understand Serbia’s attitudes towards homosexuality is, ultimately, to understand Serb identity itself. Notions of Serb identity have always formed around the notion that Serbia is an independent and self-reliant bastion, surrounded by perfidious foes—whether those foes were the Ottoman Turks of 1389, the clerical-fascist Croatian Ustaše in World War II, or the Bosniak and Kosovan Muslims in the 1990s. This notion of being surrounded by external enemies means that national identity has typically emphasised Serbia’s own unique features in contrast to its neighbours—i.e. that is ethnically Serb, and that it is religiously Orthodox.

This interweaving of religion and nationalism is as old as Serbia itself: after all, the early rulers of Serbia’s founding Nemanjić dynasty, still revered by Serb nationalists, were all canonised as Orthodox saints as a result of their extensive monastery-building and support for the church. When Serbia was subsumed by the Ottoman Empire, partially absorbed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and when it later became a part of Yugoslavia, the Serb identity no longer had a sovereign state on which to define itself; what remained, though, was the church, and it was through this that Serbs found unity.

The religious nationalism of the late 1980s and early 1990s, then, can be more accurately viewed as a return to the tradition of centuries than an emergence; it is the half-century’s atheism of communist Yugoslavia that is, historically speaking, the aberration. A fundamentally secular country did not turn to religious nationalism; a briefly secular country returned to it.

With the return of such sentiment, there was an inevitable and concomitant rise in homophobia. Homophobia in Serbia is, of course, based partly in the same universal instincts that foster homophobia in every other country in the world, and of course homophobia did not vanish during the godless, Yugoslav era; but the resurgence in religious nationalism in the 1990s undoubtedly brought with it a new wave of homophobia. The Serbian Orthodox Church, with its strong condemnation of homosexuality, returned to the fore of political life; under Patriarch Pavle, politicians actively courted the church and policy fell into line with church dogma in many areas.

The consequences for gay rights were, naturally, negative. As well as quashing any attempt to host a pride parade in Belgrade, legislative attempts to outlaw discrimination also faltered. The initial failure of the 2009 Serbian anti-discrimination bill was due primarily to opposition from the church, and its eventual narrow passage occurred despite the church’s attitude rather than because of it. To Serbia’s credit, the final act’s anti-discrimination provisions are fairly strong:

“Seksualna orijentacija je privatna stvar i niko ne može biti pozvan da se javno izjasni o svojoj seksualnoj orijentaciji.

“Svako ima pravo da se izjasni o svojoj seksualnoj orijentaciji, a diskriminatorsko postupanje zbog takvog izjašnjavanja je zabranjeno.”

[“Sexual orientation shall be a private matter, and no one may be called to declare publicly their sexual orientation.

“Everyone shall have the right to declare their sexual orientation, and discriminatory treatment on the grounds of such declarations shall be forbidden.”]

Unfortunately, though, reality is yet to catch up with legislation. Though officially outlawed, discrimination remains distressingly frequent, and the law can never counter the sort of informal, generalised intimidation that led to the cancellation of the 2009 pride parade. A wholesale change in attitude is necessary, and none seems forthcoming; the church is still unassailable, nationalism still sacred, homophobia still the norm.

The political atmosphere in Serbia, then, is one in which anyone who wishes to be perceived to be concerned with the security of the Serbs cannot be seen to express a pro-gay viewpoint; to do so would be to go against the church and to capitulate to Serbia’s external and internal enemies. This was true in 2001, and it was true in 2009. In 2010, the Serbian minister for Human and Minority Rights, Svetozar Čiplić, has proffered his assurance that a pride parade in Belgrade will go ahead at some point this year; until Serbian attitudes progress and ensure that a pride parade can be enjoyed safely, though, Serbia surely has little to be proud of.

At the start of January Josipović’s predecessor, Stipe Mesić, raised Serbia’s hackles by choosing Kosovo as the location of his final official visit. Croatia’s recognition of Kosovo’s independence has been a significant source of tension for Serbia, and an official visit—during which Mesić received honorary citizenship and the “Golden Medal of Freedom”—did little to soothe that.

Nor too did the decision by Mesić in the same week to reduce the sentence of Siniša Rimac, a war criminal who was convicted for the 1991 execution of Serb civilians in western Slavonia. Though Mesić on the same day also reduced the sentence of a Serb convicted of the torture of Croat soldiers in Bosnia, the Serbian media has thus far, inevitably, chosen to focus on the pardoning of the Croat.

Mesić provoked yet further ire the following week when he threatened to use the Croatian army in Bosnia if speculation about a Bosnian Serb referendum on independence came to fruition. “If [Republika Srpska Prime Minister] Milorad Dodik scheduled a referendum… I would send the army,” Mesić said; Dodik and Serbian President Boris Tadić were predictably, and understandably, outraged.

Some have argued that Mesić is somewhat of a lame duck, not to be taken seriously: after all, he was constitutionally term-limited and so prevented from standing for re-election, and at the age of 75 he will almost certainly see the presidency as the finale of his five-decade political career. It was inevitable, then, that he would see out the interim by making both official visits and some statements he might otherwise have kept to himself. But until Josipović’s inauguration, he still remains in ultimate control of Croatia and her not-insignificant military; such recklessness will always threaten local stability in a region as temperamental as the Balkans.

Mesić, of course, has not worked single-handedly to undermine Serbo-Croatian relations. In response to Mesić’s threats to send the Croatian army into Bosnia, an angry Tadić accused Mesić of being a “warmonger” and threatened to report Croatia to the UN Security Council; by rising to the bait, Tadić ensured that an ill-considered remark was elevated to the status of a diplomatic incident, and that Serbo-Croatian relations were damaged further.

Tadić later announced that he has turned down an invitation to Josipović’s inauguration ceremony, a major—and staggeringly puerile—diplomatic snub. Tadić claimed that his motivation was the presence at the ceremony of Kosovan President Fatmir Sejdiu, but his recent spat with Mesić must surely have played a part.

Josipović, to his credit, met the snub with aplomb, and has announced that he does not see Tadić’s decision as an act of hostility towards Croatia. Beyond this ventured gesture of polite rhetoric, though, he must surely wonder whether this earliest of interactions is a harbinger of struggles to come.

The issue that bubbles insidiously underneath all of this petty squabbling is, in fairness, far from trivial. In 1999, Croatia filed suit with the International Court of Justice in the Hague, suing Serbia for what it alleges was genocide committed during the Croatian War of Independence in 1991–95.

The case has always been a sore point for Serbia, who look upon the devastation unleashed by Croatia upon the Croatian Serbs in 1995 as a greater crime than any they may have committed in the defence of the short-lived, breakaway Serb state in Croatia. Serbia has spent the last decade trying to force Croatia to drop the case, but in January of this year they instead filed a counter-suit at the ICJ which sought recompense for alleged Croatian war crimes during the same period.

In truth, both sides are almost certainly guilty of some or most of the crimes they try to foist solely upon the other. The court cases—in some hopeful fantasy—might then bring some closure to the events of 1991–95, might bring an end to the denial that plagues the two countries; the prospects are bleak, though. Similar rulings on the Bosnian genocide have done little to foster concord there, and there is nothing to suggest that the judicial evaluation of the Croatian war will be any different.

Until the proceedings at the ICJ are resolved, then, they will continue to act as a wedge driving Croatia and Serbia apart, and will perhaps do so even after their legal completion. When he takes office, Josipović’s foremost foreign policy challenge will be to guide Croatia towards a future in the European Union: that future, though, depends on his salving the wounds of the 1990s. As Croatia’s first president not to have been directly involved in the war, perhaps he will finally be capable of treading this most delicate of tightropes; for the sake of the whole region’s future, he must be successful.

Serbia’s progress has been the most remarkable. 12 or 18 months ago, the relationship between Serbia and the EU was frosty at best, but since then the change has been remarkable: the EU has unfrozen the interim trade agreement between Serbia and the EU; Serbian citizens no longer need visas to travel to EU countries; Serbia’s previously Eurosceptic population is now 70 per cent in favour of joining the organisation. At the end of December 2009, Serbia made clear that it wishes to apply formally for EU membership and was received warmly by existing EU members; it’s a remarkable progression.

Serbia has rumbled, slowly but surely, across the starting line of a race that EU officials estimate will take 5–7 years to complete. Kosovo will, of course, provide many of the obstacles to negotiations—virtually all of the EU countries have, to Serbia’s pique, recognised Kosovo’s independence—but it will not delay Serbia’s advancement forever: the prize is simply too great, and even the hardliners know it. Right-wing politicians like Dragan Marković, leader of Serbia’s nationalist Jedinstvena Srbija (“United Serbia”) party, have spoken in recent weeks of the benefits that EU membership would bring to Serbia—something that would have seemed inconceivable just a few years ago. The presidency of the pro-EU Boris Tadić has, it seems, done much to rehabilitate the institution in the eyes of Serbians.

Croatia, too, has made significant progress. Croatian citizens, like their Serbian counterparts, no longer need visas to visit the EU and the fight against corruption within the Croatian government has been moderately successful; in general, Croatia’s functioning institutions and stable economy have been a solid foundation on which to negotiate Croatian accession to the EU. A border dispute with Slovenia over Piran Bay/Savudrija Bay remains the only significant obstacle to Croatia’s membership; it seems difficult to conceive of a future for Croatia that does not involve EU membership.

Serbia and Croatia’s rapid development and willingness to cooperate with the wider European community is something to be praised and encouraged, of course. But as Serbia and Croatia march towards joining Slovenia in the European Union, with all the concomitant economic benefits that brings, Bosnia risks being left behind—a travesty, given the tremendous boost that EU membership could bring to a country of over four million still reeling from the 1992–95 war.

Serbia and Croatia both emerged from the Yugoslav dissolution as territorially secure, ethnically fairly homogeneous states. Once Croatia had dealt with its war of independence and its secessionist Serbs, and once Serbia had dealt with the Kosovo War in 1999, the process of rebuilding—and of working towards European integration—could begin. Though they have not been without their ethnic problems, the fact that the two countries had overwhelming majorities of single ethnic groups made these issues troublesome but not insurmountable—and certainly made the risk of a return to the troubles of the 1990s unlikely.

Bosnia could not provide a stronger contrast. Its peace in 1995 had a jury-rigged air about it: the Dayton Agreement, which brought peace in 1995 and remains Bosnia’s constitution, is rife with workarounds, get-outs and concessions that seek in vain to spark some sort of cooperation between Bosnia’s three main ethnic groups, none of which forms an absolute majority. The federal executive is hamstrung by its own consociationalism; the need for guaranteed ethnic representation at all times means that executive power, ordinarily vested in one officeholder, is split between three representatives—one Croat, one Bosniak, and one Serb—with predictably unproductive results.

To complicate matters further, the two entities created at Dayton, the Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, are split almost entirely along ethnic lines: the Republika Srpska is majority-Serb, whereas the Federation is majority-Bosniak with a substantial Croat minority. This extends the scope for inter-ethnic squabbling, and allows entity governments to undermine the designedly weak central government.

Bosnia’s Serbs have always considered Dayton an imposition. Though the Republika Srpska enjoys considerable autonomy, Bosnia’s Serbs have nevertheless sought to undermine central institutions and strengthen the institutional and practical sovereignty of the Republika Srpska wherever possible. This extends to challenging the authority of the EU within Bosnia, and power struggles between the Republika Srpska and the Office of the High Representative are distressingly frequent. Unrest is not limited to the Republika Srpska, though. Many in the Federation challenge the Dayton order just as strongly; some have gone so far as to call for the wholesale eradication of the Republika Srpska, viewing it as a product of genocide and of wartime territorial conquest—with predictable consequences for inter-ethnic cooperation.

Dissatisfaction with Dayton is perhaps inevitable: it was, after all, the product of peace negotiations in 1995, and Bosnia has changed much since then. Reform is inevitable; indeed, it is an essential requirement for joining the EU, since the current constitution conceivably violates the ECHR. But constitutional reform has been made impossible by the fact that opinions on reform are so extreme and so split along ethnic lines. A consensus-based government with no inter-ethnic consensus is a recipe for gridlock, and that is precisely what has happened.

Corruption also remains a significant problem. Corruption is not, of course, a uniquely Bosnian problem; Croatia and Serbia have also had to overcome significant problems with graft, bribery and other corrupt practices. Bosnia, though, has been less successful than either Serbia or Croatia in combatting corruption. Integration with pan-European and global processes, such as the OECD’s bribery convention or the Council of Europe’s anti-corruption convention, has been frustratingly slow; journalistic investigation into corruption is hampered by ineffective freedom of information legislation, and threats against government whistleblowers are frequent.

The future looks bleak. In October 2010, Bosnia faces perhaps its most crucial presidential and parliamentary elections since independence. They come at a time when Bosnia’s inter-ethnic tensions are almost certainly at a postwar high, and when experts predict that the global economic downturn—which has thus far left the country largely unaffected—will hit Bosnia’s economy hard.

The Republika Srpska shows no signs of cooperating with either central institutions or the Federation, and RS Prime Minister Milorad Dodik spent much of 2009 clashing with the Office of the High Representative over more and more important issues. Dodik must shore up his core support, of course, but surely he knows the potential price of actually acting on his secession rhetoric—popular though it may be with his constituency. If Bosnia is to overcome the huge obstacles between it and EU membership, its entire population must unite behind that single cause; for as long as it does not, it will surely be left lagging painfully behind its neighbours.

But Croatia was not wholly Croat; far from it. Roughly twelve per cent of the Croatian population were Serbs, who lived mostly in the majority-Serb areas in the northeast and centre of the country. The Croatian Serbs had much to fear from a nationalist Croatian government: in World War II Croatia had been ruled by the Ustaše, an ultranationalist, anti-Serb, pro-Catholic, pro-Axis fascist movement that massacred Croatian Serbs with ruthless efficiency.

Tuđman’s movement, for its part, did little to allay these fears. Tuđman publicly minimised the numbers of people killed at Ustaše concentration camps, particularly Jasenovac. The movement as a whole adopted as their symbol the “šahovnica”, the famous red-and-white checkerboard flag that had been the official national symbol of the Ustaše.

Alienated by the newly elected Croatian government, the Croatian Serbs responded by severing all ties to it. The Serb Democratic Party broke from the Croatian parliament in May 1990; the wider Serb public followed, and the process of secession began. Serbs set up roadblocks severing the Serb areas in central and northeastern Croatia from the rest of the country, effectively establishing an independent state which eventually became known as the Republika Srpska Krajina. Their reasoning perhaps was understandable: the Croatians had, after all, used the same arguments when justifying their own secession from Yugoslavia.

Things in the former Yugoslavia, though, are never simple. Croatia’s populace, fractal-like, exposes minorities within minorities at every scale: and so, just as Croatia was home to substantial Serb minorities, the so-called Serb areas within Croatia were home to their own Croat minorities. These were not two distinct populations, between whom the borders had simply to be rearranged; they merged and faded across each other, and there was much in dispute.

As the Croatian War progressed, it was on these battlegrounds that the conflict was to be fought and lost. Croatian Serbs, aided by the JNA and the Serbian secret services, put up staunch resistance to the Croatian army. By 1992 the front lines had, for the most part, settled, and the Serb forces had cemented their control of the breakaway regions; the next three years saw only limited territorial exchanges. It looked, for a while at least, as though the independence of the Serbs in Croatia might become a political reality, as would eventually happen in Bosnia. But in 1995, the Croatian military launched a series of offensives that were to dash any hopes for an independent Serb Krajina.

The first Croatian operation was, while modest in ambition, of pressing strategic importance. Codenamed Operation Flash, the plan’s aim was to retake for Croatia the breakaway Serb region known as the Serbian Autonomous Oblast of Western Slavonia (SAOZS), located at the westernmost extremity of Slavonia in the northeast of Croatia. Although its borders had remained static since their declaration in 1991, if left unchecked Serb forces there could theoretically advance to Croatia’s northern border, severing all of eastern Croatia from Zagreb—thereby striking a devastating strategic blow to Croatian forces and greatly expanding the territory under their control.

In 1992, the Croats had launched a series of small-scale offensives that had driven southwards towards the Bosnian border, reducing the SAOZS to a relatively small pocket. But it remained, and remained a high priority for the Croats; and so, inevitably, it was the first target in the summer of 1995. The plan was to strike simultaneously from the north, east and west, surging through the oblast and overwhelming the Serb forces with superior weaponry.

In the end, the operation was so swift and so successful as almost to be anticlimactic. In the morning of 1 May, 7,200 Croat soldiers stormed into the oblast; in a matter of hours the 8,000-strong Serb force surrendered, 283 of its number killed and 1,500 captured. Western Slavonia had returned to Croat control; the tide had turned, and the Croats could now target the rest of the Krajina. First, though, there was the matter of the Bosnian Serbs to the south.

By the summer of 1995, the Bosnian Serbs had made huge territorial gains and controlled vast swathes of Bosnia. In western Bosnia, where most of Bosnia’s Croat population was or had been concentrated, just one tiny pocket in the northwest, surrounding the town of Bihać, remained outside Serb control. This territory spanned almost the whole length of the Croatian-Bosnian border, over which the Bosnian Serbs helped supply their Croatian counterparts with supplies and materiel.

This western region of Bosnia was not only important from the perspective of the Bosnian Croats; it also held the key to the Croatian army’s desire to capture Knin, the town in central Croatia that had been the starting point and the ideological focal point of the Serb resistance since 1991. Knin was less than ten miles from the Bosnian border; an opportunity to sever its supply lines was too tantalising to miss.

In July 1995, encouraged by their efforts in Western Slavonia, the Croatian army hatched a plot to retake these areas of western Bosnia, and in the process sever Knin’s supply lines. In the aptly named “Operation Summer ’95”, Croatian forces advanced north from Herzegovina in southern Bosnia with all the swiftness that had characterised Operation Flash. This time, however, they met with stiff resistance from the Bosnian Serbs, who were far better equipped than had been the Croatian Serbs; after all, they had by 1995 enjoyed three years of support from the JNA and the Serbian intelligence services.

Eventually, though, the Croatians prevailed, and carved out a corridor in western Bosnia that spanned 1600km². The road from the Republika Srpska to Knin was now in Croatian hands: with no chance of resupply from the Bosnian Serbs, Knin and the surrounding Serb territory was living on borrowed time. The stage was set for the Croatian coup de grace: in August, it was delivered.

Operations Flash and Summer ’95 had weakened the Croatian Serb forces to an almost fatal degree. Although Slobodan Milošević had promised to assist the Krajina Serbs with materiel and intelligence, they still remained incredibly vulnerable to a concerted Croatian offensive. The balance of power had in just a few months shifted entirely. It was something the Croatians were well aware of; when the EU and US proposed a diplomatic solution that would see Serbs given autonomy within Croatia—but short of the independence they had previously requested—it was rejected outright by Croatian negotiators. With the Serbs on the ropes, the Croats had one thing on their minds: revenge.

Before dawn on 4 August 1995, 150,000 Croatian troops assembled along a 300 kilometre front in preparation for what was to be the largest military offensive in Europe since World War II. Their plan was textbook blitzkrieg: elite Crotian Guards Brigades would advance rapidly, while less elite units held their continually advancing lines before surrounding and destroying the remaining enemy pockets. It worked perfectly; though predictably strong resistance was encountered in places, the Serb capitulation was inevitable in the face of such a well-organised and well-equipped enemy.

Over the next few days, the Croatian advance was precipitate. By 5 August, they had captured much of Dalmatia; by 6 August, they had reached the Bosnian border and captured, finally, the town of Knin. Tuđman staged an exultant victory celebration in Knin as the šahovnica was raised above the town’s ancient fortress; the Croatian Serbs were, for all intents and purposes, crushed. Over the next few days, Croatian troops mopped up the last remaining resistance, and on 9 August the Serbs formally surrendered.

Just under a thousand soldiers were killed in all: 700 Serbs, and around 200 Croatians. The real victims, though, were the Serb inhabitants of the Krajina. Estimates vary as to the number of civilians displaced in the offensive; predictably, the numbers vary wildly depending on the ethnic sympathy of the source. Serb sources claim as many as 250,000; the actual figure is likely between 150,000 and 200,000, two-thirds of the total number displaced in the whole war.

Most controversially, the flight of these refugees had been planned in advance, with the help of the UN who were faced with a stark choice: condemn the Serb populace to possible murder or to certain expulsion. Corridors were built in to the Croatian’s planned battle lines, through which the Serb populace fled naturally into Bosnia; it was some of the most effective ethnic cleansing ever perpetrated. While the Serbs were in flight, there were incidents of arson and property destruction that left Serb villages uninhabitable were their original population to return. To make matters worse, those refugees who managed to reach Serbia were then conscripted into the Serbian armed forces and sent to Slavonia. Many were mistreated for their perceived failure to defend the Krajina.

Following the end of the war, Operation Storm was one of the highest priorities for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Authorisation for the operation had extended to the highest levels: had Franjo Tuđman not died in 1999, he would have been indicted for war crimes committed during the operation. As it is, though, there are three indictees at the tribunal: Ante Gotovina, then a commander in the Croatian army; Ivan Čermak, then the Assistant Defence Minister; and Mladen Markač, then head of the Croatian Special Police.

For convenience, their trials have been condensed into one. Without wishing to tempt fate, proceedings seem to be progressing with some speed—by the standards of the ICTY, at least. The defendants were indicted in 2006; the trial began in March 2008; by March 2009, the prosecution had concluded; in May 2009 the case for the defence began. Within the next six months, then, there is the very real possibility of a final verdict. Though the Croatian Serbs will likely never attain autonomy within Croatia, and though most of those displaced have still not been able to return to their homes and may never be able to, the prospect of justice at the ICTY offers the prospect of at least some measure of closure for those whose lives were altered forever in that long and bloody summer of 1995.

Admittedly, the process has not been smooth. Following the declaration of independence, there were large-scale demonstrations in Belgrade and scuffles between Serbs and Albanians, and Serbian politicians of all stripes have vowed to oppose an independent Kosovo. What didn’t happen, however, is a repeat of the conflicts of the 1990s: Kosovo stands a chance, therefore, of becoming only the second former-Yugoslav entity after Macedonia to gain independence peacefully, something staggering to imagine given the scope of its territorial and ethnic disputes with Serbia.

The first time around, in 1991, those states that chose to secede from the Serbian-controlled Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia endured protracted wars of independence for their troubles. Not even Slovenia was spared fighting, even though it had no territorial disagreements with other Yugoslav republics and was ethnically homogeneous, and thus had no minorities wishing to remain in Yugoslavia. Croatia and Bosnia, who had both territorial disputes and secessionist minorities, were subjected to bitter conflict for three years. Hundreds of thousands died; countless more fled or were driven from their homes, many of whom have still not returned.

The international community, sadly, played a key role in enabling this bloodshed. Mired in concerns first about whether this was a European problem or an American one, and then over quite what the common European line should be, the supposed mediators of the Yugoslav crisis could not agree on the most trivial of matters, let alone on whether or not to afford the new republics diplomatic recognition. Germany pushed hard for early recognition, the rest of Europe disagreed; while Europe fiddled, Bosnia and Croatia burned. Had the European Community recognised the new states and their borders immediately, and reinforced that support with the threat of military force, the region could perhaps have been spared conflict, and a focus could have been placed on a peaceful solution to the legitimate grievances of the Croats in Bosnia and the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia.

Kosovo found itself in 2008, then, in a similar situation to that of Croatia and Bosnia in 1991: as a constituent part of a Serb-dominated state, it wished to organise itself along ethnic lines in order to better pursue self-determination for its people. Kosovo’s central belt, with its disparate Serb enclaves and mixed population, was demographically not substantially different from the Drina Valley in Bosnia where the massacres at Srebrenica and Višegrad took place. Its Serb population lived as the Bosniaks had in the Drina Valley, in disparate pockets and enclaves, surrounded by Kosovar Albanians as the Drina Valley Bosniaks were surrounded by Serbs. When Kosovo declared independence, then, one might have been forgiven for predicting a repeat of the bloodshed of 1992–1995 in Bosnia and Croatia, or of the 1998–1999 Kosovo War. If this was to be avoided, Kosovo needed the international community not to repeat the mistake of 1991: would they have the diplomatic fortitude to recognise Kosovo immediately, and stave off any potential conflict?

In the end, they did. Within 24 hours of declaring independence, Kosovo found itself with the absolutely essential recognition of the United States, France, and the UK, three of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. Within a week, 17 countries had recognised Kosovo; to date, 63 countries have done so. A clear message was sent to Serbia: military action was out of the question. The issue was by no means settled, but early recognition ensured that the future of Kosovo would be determined at the negotiating table and in the international courts, not on the battlefield. The international community had achieved that rarest of things in their dealings with the former Yugoslavia: success. Tentative, diffident success; but success regardless.

His life surveyed change on an utterly incomprehensible scale. He was born in 1914 in Kućanci, a village that in his lifetime was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, of Yugoslavia, and finally of an independent Croatia. In the region of his birth, he lived through the crumbling of two mighty empiresat the end of World War I—the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman—and the establishing of a new Yugoslav state partly in their stead.

He lived through World War II, and the devastation it wrought upon his homeland; it was at least partly as a result of this destruction that he was in 1946 ordained as a monk in the Serbian Orthodox church, taking the name Pavle after the apostle Paul of whom he was a particular admirer. He was to spend the rest of his life in the service of this institution: his loyalty and assiduousness were rewarded with promotion, and in 1957 he was given the coveted bishopric of Ras and Prizren, a highly prestigious appointment that he was to hold for over thirty years.

His crowning glory, though, was to come in 1990 when he succeeded the seriously ill Patriarch German as Patriarch of Serbia, the sixth highest-ranking patriarchy in Eastern Orthodoxy. His appointment was to come at a time of yet more turmoil for Yugoslavia. Already tensions were brewing, and within five years Pavle’s constituency, formerly relatively unified, was to be spread across four states; within his lifetime it would splinter yet further, and ultimately Pavle saw his once-Yugoslav flock divided between Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Macedonia.

The prospect of such disunity, and the perceived need to fight it, was to prove the most contentious aspect of Pavle’s patriarchy. He was by no means a stooge of the Serbian government; his relationship with Milošević’s Socialist Party of Serbia was fractured at best, and by the late 1990s Pavle was clashing frequently with the government. In 1997, as Belgrade was rocked with anti-government protesters, Pavle was outspoken in his support for the protesters; when Milošević was ousted in 2000, he openly supported opposition figures.

His support of the Serb cause, though, was unwavering. Even as Bosnian Serbs massacred Bosniaks by the thousands, Pavle offered them and their Croatian brethren his full support: the image of the commander of the Bosnian Serb army, Ratko Mladić, kneeling to kiss Pavle’s hand was to become a defining image of the Bosnian War, and his support of the notorious organised crime figure and paramilitary leader Arkan would haunt him for years.

He never recanted this support, however, even in the face of international condemnation. Even despite this steadfastness, he has in recent years come to be seen as a peacemaker, someone to be lauded for his role in the downfall of Milošević. To ignore the more unpalatable aspects of his patriarchy, though, is to perpetrate a whitewashing that Yugoslav history cannot stand. Pavle was witness to extraordinary change in his lifetime, almost all of it with an extraordinary human cost; we can but hope that with Pavle passes another small part of that divisive, ethnocentric ideology that has so plagued the former Yugoslavia. Perhaps the reaction to his death, and especially its diverse origins, can with cautious optimism be seen as a positive step towards that goal.

In few other areas of Bosnia is this distribution and interaction more problematic and more historically cemented than in the Drina Valley. Towns like Višegrad, Srebrenica, and Goražde were multiethnic, typically Bosniak-majority, islands in an otherwise Serb sea: to those with an interest in the contiguousness of the Serb population, they were a problem, and one that needed an imminent solution.

In 1992, the VRS, the army of the Republika Srpska, formed the Drina Corps. Its express aim was to clear the Drina Valley of non-Serbs, and in the spring of 1992, accompanied by Serb police forces and local Serb sympathisers it mounted a significant offensive in the valley. This military action included shocking acts of brutality; in Višegrad, for example, Serb forces massacred 3,000 civilians and detained many more in a concentration camp where they were subjected to beatings, torture, and forced labour. The VRS was able to convince local Serbs that their Bosniak neighbours had been plotting to rise up against them; by April 1992, 95 per cent of Višegrad’s Bosniak population had fled or been killed.

Serb forces throughout the valley were pushed back, however, by Bosniak forces who were in early 1992 very much a waxing force. Throughout the rest of the year, the Bosniaks managed to keep in check the Serb territorial gains and in some instances—most notably Goražde—they made gains of their own. It was clear, though, that this situation could not last. While the entirety of Yugoslavia had been placed under an arms embargo soon after the outbreak of fighting, this affected disproportionately the Bosniak forces; the VRS were able to obtain sophisticated hand-me-downs from the Serbian-dominated JNA. By late 1992, one town above all others had come to symbolise Bosniak resistance in the Drina valley: Srebrenica.

Before the war, Srebrenica had been relatively peaceful, and interactions between its Bosniak majority and Serb minority were no more tense than in other communities in the region. Its location, however, was to prove its undoing. So close to the Serbian border, and so overwhelmingly Bosniak, it stood strikingly in the way of the Bosnian Serbs’ territorial ambitions. Accordingly, it was both attacked and defended with vigour.

By 1993, even as Serb forces made territorial gains throughout eastern Bosnia, Srebrenica remained a resolute Bosniak bastion within Serb-controlled territory. Even while it held firm in the face of Serb encirclement, though, there was concern that it would fall and in April 1993 it was declared a “safe area” by the United Nations Security Council, a move that would supposedly offer it protection from Serb aggression and prevent Serbs gaining by conquest a geographically contiguous and ethnically cleansed state.

The situation was reduced to a siege. Surrounding the enclave, the well-equipped Drina Corps brigades had tanks, armoured personnel carriers, automatic weapons, mortars, and—most importantly—a clear and well-organised command structure, with Vujadin Popović at the top reporting directly to Ratko Mladić. Inside the enclave, the disorganised Bosniak forces were mostly armed with aging hunting rifles, if they were armed at all; their command structure had long since disintegrated. The writing was, even by 1994, already on the wall.

Lieutenant Colonel Slavko Ognjenovic gave orders to the Drina Corps in early July 1994 that outlined Serb plans for the enclave. “We must continue to arm, train, discipline, and prepare the RS Army for the execution of this crucial task—the expulsion of Muslims from the Srebrenica enclave,” he wrote. “There will be no retreat when it comes to the Srebrenica enclave, we must advance. The enemy’s life has to be made unbearable and their temporary stay in the enclave impossible so that they leave the enclave en masse as soon as possible, realising that they cannot survive there.”

The next summer, Serb patience ran out. The Bosniak inhabitants’ ability to withstand the siege tactics employed by the VRS was impressive; a change of tactics was needed if Serb forces were ever to take Srebrenica. And so, in July 1995, they mounted a full-scale offensive on the enclave, intent on reducing it to at most the urban area of Srebrenica, an area thirty times smaller than the original “safe area”.

With the Serb’s overwhelming military advantage and artillery support, and with a confused UN force unable to use forceful resistance, the Serb’s advance was brief and destructive. Four days after their offensive began, they had reduced the the enclave to the town of Srebrenica. The international response was confused; not willing to risk the lives of their own troops, NATO and UN member states made it clear that a military response was out of the question. The VRS now hard carte blanche to take Srebrenica itself, and they did so on July 11.

Throughout the offensive there had been sporadic, and probably unplanned, murder and rape of Bosniak civilians; as the occupation progressed, however, an organised campaign of genocide was launched. “People are not little stones, or keys in someone’s pocket, that can be moved from one place to another just like that,” said Ratko Mladić. “Therefore, we cannot precisely arrange for only Serbs to stay in one part of the country while removing others painlessly. I do not know how Mr Krajisnik and Mr Karadžić will explain that to the world. That is genocide.”

Throughout the surrounding area, those who had tried to escape were tracked down by Serb forces and massacred. A column of ten to fifteen thousand fled north from Srebrenica and began a gruelling march to try and reach Bosniak territory; those who did not die of exhaustion or commit suicide fell prey to Serb artillery and frequent ambushes, and just three thousand of the original marchers eventually arrived in Tuzla. Throughout the July of 1995, there were similar stories around Srebrenica: men, women and children rounded up and summarily executed, their escape attempts foiled, buried in anonymous mass graves. UN peacekeepers in the area did nothing; a group of 400 armed Dutch peacekeepers were present throughout but never fired anything more than a warning shot, and allowed Serb forces to take away civilians that were under UN protection. NATO airstrikes ceased immediately after they began when Serb forces threatened the lives of NATO hostages. Unwilling to risk the lives of their own, the international community stood back and gave the VRS and its allies carte blanche. They took it.

In all, Serb armed forces along with sympathetic volunteers massacred at least eight thousand Bosniaks in July 1995. It was the final moment in a destructive three years that had left the Drina Valley savagely altered, its Bosniak population almost completely destroyed. Vujadin Popović, Ratko Mladić, Radovan Karadžić, Vojislav Šešelj and their ilk had finally achieved their aim: a purely Serb Drina Valley, linked with the Republika Srpska and Serbia itself in one geographically and ethnically contiguous entity.

Nine people have been indicted by the ICTY for their role in the destruction of the Bosniak population of the Drina Valley: Vujadin Popović, Ljubiša Beara, Drago Nikolić, Ljubomir Borovčanin, Zdravko Tolimir, Radivoje Miletić, Milan Gvero, Vinko Pandurević and Milorad Trbic. At the time, the international community stood by—paralysed by infighting, concern for domestic public opinion, and simple apathy—while a populace was utterly destroyed. Any punishment, handed down by the ICTY fifteen years after the events, can never make up for the permanent disfigurement of the Drina Valley and the inaction of those who stood idle as it happened.

His academic career was marked by excellence from the beginning. A straight-A student throughout secondary school, Šešelj obtained a place to study law at the University of Sarajevo where he distinguished himself yet further: he completed his undergraduate studies in a record two and a half years, stayed on to study for his masters degree, became the youngest recipient of a doctorate in Bosnia, and eventually obtained an assistant professorship in the Political Science department.

This academic ability, however, was tempered—even from an early age—by an arrogance and disregard for authority that frequently landed him in hot water. As a teenager, he clashed with his secondary school principal and the head of his local communist party youth league, skirting the very edge of acceptability within the regime; by his time at university, he was openly criticising prominent figures in academia and in the communist party apparatus. His feud with the influential Brano Miljuš gained him infamy and some measure of support, but also expulsion from the Communist League; a pariah to the regime, he lost his academic post and was placed under surveillance by the UDBA, the Yugoslav state security organisation.

Šešelj’s disillusionment with the communist regime can perhaps be traced to this moment. But his disillusionment was largely undirected until the early 1980s, when they took an explicitly nationalist form. While in Belgrade on national service, Šešelj met a group of hardline Serb nationalists, who crafted and shaped Šešelj’s disillusionment, channeling it towards their subversive activities; encouraged by this movement, he absorbed himself wholly in extreme nationalism. The first of many hurdles was to come in 1984, however, when he was charged with “counter-revolutionary activities” and sentenced to six years in prison.

Although the sentence was commuted in 1986, Šešelj’s political infamy was to stay. He joined a group of Serb nationalists called the “Movement of Chetniks in the Free World”; their name evoked the World War II nationalist group who collaborated with the occupying axis forces and whose ethnic cleansing programmes would be eerily repeated in the 1990s. Šešelj rose quickly through the ranks to become a Vojvoda, or “duke”: he travelled extensively through Europe, Canada, the USA and Australia, plying the Serb diaspora in search of funding for the nascent nationalist movement.

Šešelj’s rise continued further in 1990, when he formed the political party Srpska narodna obnova, “Serbian National Renewal”. In the first free elections in 1990, the party received a respectable 100,000 votes—a respectable enough tally to earn the ire of the regime, which promptly banned them. Undeterred, Šešelj and his ideological allies formed the Srpska radikalna stranka, the Serbian Radical Party, and in 1991 Šešelj was both appointed President of the party and elected to the Serbian Assembly.

He used his newfound platform to devastating effect. In the coming years he would launch impassioned speeches to rallies of thousands of adoring Serbs, speeches that only grew in their severity and vitriol as the conflicts in Croatia and Bosnia developed. His basic views were shared by most hardline Serb nationalists: that is, that Serbia qua state was far different to Serbia qua “people”, and that the only way Serbs could live was if they were united in one state.

Once it became clear that Yugoslavia was no more, the idealised manifestation of that Serb state shifted; the states of Serbia and Montenegro, the rump Yugoslavia, must grow; their borders must expand across Bosnia and Croatia until all the Serbs of the former Yugoslavia could live in one state. There was just one problem: the “Serb lands” that Šešelj and his allies sought were not quite that. Far from ethnically homogeneous, they were populated by hundreds of enclaves—many substantial—of Bosniaks and Croats. This was but a minor problem for Šešelj and his ideological allies: these lands, which were in their view intrinsically Serbian and had always been, simply needed to be “cleansed”.

In the autumn of 1991, as the conflicts of the 1990s were in their infancy and the battle for the Croatian city of Vukovar was just beginning, Šešelj visited the city. “Not one Ustaše must leave Vukovar alive!”, came Šešelj’s rallying cry; by November, after a bloody siege, Serb forces captured the city and—true to Šešelj’s words—began massacring non-Serbs they encountered by the thousands.

By 1992, Šešelj’s attentions had turned to his native Bosnia. “Dear Chetnik brothers,” Šešelj told an assembled mass in Mali Zvornik in March 1992. “We are going to clean Bosnia of pagans and show them a road which will take them to the east, where they belong!” The next month, Serb forces—including the notorious “Tigers”, controlled by the organised crime boss Arkan—took Zvornik. In the ensuing chaos its non-Serb population was routinely detained, beaten and tortured; by June, they were being massacred. Hundreds died, but Zvornik had been “cleaned”; the road for its inhabitants lead not to the east, but to a mass grave.

Throughout 1991 and 1992, Šešelj enjoyed the support of Belgrade and of the Serbian President, Slobodan Milošević. But by 1993, Belgrade too had earned his ire. The ever-calculating Milošević had decided that to continue his support for the Republika Srpska in the face of near-universal international condemnation was to commit political suicide; he duly withdrew his overt support, sending Šešelj into a rage and prompting Milošević to denounce Šešelj as “the personification of violence and primitivism”. While the staunchly ideological Šešelj was always destined to come into conflict with the pragmatic Milošević, the latter had a point: Šešelj’s policies, while ideologically pure, advocated a nationalism that was so violent and intense in its approach that the international community could never accept them. It was only through the bumbling incompetence and fractured disagreement of the international community that the Bosnian Serb forces ever made the territorial gains that they did.

Šešelj’s flirtation with extreme nationalism in the early 1980s, then, was to profoundly change Yugoslavia, coming as it did at such a formative period for the region. His clashes with and distaste for the ruling communist regime created an ideological vacuum which was filled with a vitriolic Serb nationalism; as he went on to spread this ideology of hate across the region, Šešelj stoked fires that had lain dormant throughout the postwar period. Once within the movement, he quickly attained a position of influence and dominance; he achieved high office within Serbia, and his speeches at rallies across Bosnia and Croatia inspired greatly the paramilitary forces that were to commit some of the gravest crimes against humanity in the Croatian and Bosnian wars. Unlike other figures in the Bosnian Serb movement, Šešelj was not at ground level issuing orders; with the power of his rhetoric and the prestige of his office, however, he proved just as capable of altering events as those who got their hands dirty on the ground—with devastating consequences for the non-Serb populations of Yugoslavia.

Yet Iran, as Elliot discovers, is a country that defies such temerarious judgement. A veneer of religious conservatism barely stretches over a highly complex—and at times highly contradictory—social order. The state’s overtly anti-Western sentiment, for example, is both aggravated and tempered by its population’s desire for both sovereignty and domestic reform; from the bustling, modern metropolis of Tehran, to the staggeringly beautiful Safavid city of Isfahan, to the conservative heartland of Qom, it is this tension more than any other that seems to underpin the very fabric of Iranian society.

Elliot’s book, then, is less a piece of travel writing than a wholesale attempt to understand Iranian society. Faced with a social structure “permeated with Janus-like traits”, Elliot instead turns to the country’s art, its history, and above all its architecture in an attempt to understand its mores. It is a journey that has mixed results; Elliot learns much of these arguably superficial elements, but remains—to his frustration—largely distanced from what he sees as the true Iran, as if the complexities of its societal order were anything less than a lifetime’s work.

His quest is perhaps hamstrung further by his own attitude. Like many travel writers before him, Elliot combines a great passion for his subject with a curious irascibility; perhaps this is an inevitable consequence of the enforced solitude of the professional traveller. Still, I’m not sure how many times one can relive anecdotes of a frustrated Elliot tearing apart a taxi driver for having charged him “foreigners’ rates” without beginning to suspect the problem lies not with Iran’s cab-driving fraternity but with our humble narrator.

It’s impossible to disapprove for long, though: Elliot’s insights into Iranian art and especially architecture are incredibly informed and well-considered, reinforced by a historical knowledge that at times borders on the intimidating. His enthusiasm for the tiniest details—a calligraphic flourish here, a particularly well-proportioned muqarnas there—is thoroughly infectious, and his explanations are detailed without straying into condescension.

At one point, with an ersatz compass made out of kebab-skewers, he discovers that the proportions and layout of the famous Naqsh-e Jahan in Isfahan conform exactly to the so-called “divine section”, his palpable excitement increasing ever-further with each swing of his compass as he reveals yet another instance of the magic number. His reaction is the sort of childish glee that one cannot help but share, and the result is a band of readers with an interest in the geometric precision of Persian architecture that they never knew they had.

It is in this enthusiasm, and in the imparting of this enthusiasm, that the book’s triumphant success can be found: if you didn’t have an interest in Iran before picking it up, you will by the time you put it down. While I’m sure Elliot would not profess to be either an historian or a political analyst, and while this is fundamentally a work of travel writing, I can think of no better work than this from which to learn the unique way in which history and politics have shaped Iran.