Sunset over Sarajevo: despite one of the most expensive postwar reconstructions in recent history, Bosnia’s ethnic divisions have led to stasis

Thucydides once wrote that war is a violent teacher—meaning, I suppose, that one should take lessons from past brutalities. Yet the Balkans, a place that has suffered more than its share of horror, seems doomed to repeat the past. The war that gutted Bosnia has been over for 15 years, yet the process of reconciliation is nowhere near complete. Postwar reconstruction is always challenging, but Bosnia has deferred it to spectacular levels. Why?

When Bosnia’s leaders sat down in a dreary airbase in Ohio in December 1995 and signed the Dayton Peace Accords, they ended three years of fighting that had devastated the small, landlocked republic and killed an estimated 100,000 Bosnians. I reported that war, and return to the country often—particularly to the capital, Sarajevo, which sustained a