For Young Bosnians, ‘Postnormal Times’ Have Become the Norm

Pundits are quick to call the current situation the worst political crisis since the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995, which ended Bosnia's 1992-5 war. 

But on countless occasions over the past decade-and-a-half, analysts have voiced similar views. Bosnians have grown used to being told that they live in a crisis. 

For my generation of Bosnians born in the early 1980s, crises have come to define the past four decades. First, it was the crises in Yugoslavia, as the country dissolved. 

A young woman reads the day's newspaper with the first picture  former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic after he was arrested on its front page in Belgrade, Serbia, 31 July 2008. Photo: EPA/ALEKSANDAR PLAVEVSKI

Then, it was the 1992-1995 war. Post-war reconstruction and rebuilding in the late-1990s offered hope but it was also a period of uncertainty as to what lay ahead. Low levels of employment and suspicious privatizations meant that many citizens faced financial difficulties once the existential threat of war had ceased. 

The rise of clientalistic patronage networks favoured those with links to major political parties, with most others left out. Newly minted tycoons failed to uphold basic rights of employees in their private enterprises.

In the late-1990s, Bosnia went through several transitions: from one-party rule to multi-party democracy, from a Socialist economy to capitalism, and from war to peace. While the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe struggled to transition to democracy and capitalism, Bosnia faced the additional challenge of rebuilding the state and society after a long war.

The early 2000s seemed to inaugurate a new chapter. The scars of war were fresh but life was coming...