Ten years after the Dayton Accords what do we see?

Ten years ago, the Dayton Accords ended the hot war and slaughter in the Balkans. This war came home to me as very real from seeing the movie, "Before the Rain" as well as from watching the news. My father had spent time in Yugoslavia as part of a teachers' international exchange program in the Sixties.....many of the places I saw on the news were places he had talked about. I had a difficult time understanding how places in 20th Century Europe could slip into barbarism so easily. I had a difficult time understanding how Sarajevo, which I had watched hosting the Winter Olympics on TV could become a place so dangerous that people had to run from point to point to avoid being shot by snipers.

So. Ten years on has the "peace" changed the underlying conditions? Is it likely that Croat and Serb and Bosnian would hang out together in the same town with respect for each others' differences if there was no one watching? The commentaries I heard today suggested that this is not the case. The structures created by the peace have led to more polarized and 'apartheid' societies, to people who hate the authority they must bow to, to renegade war criminals protected by underground gangster organizations. All of which taken together says solutions which don't address and acknowledge root realities cannot be solutions. Is there a relationship here to what we are trying to achieve in Iraq?

The thorny situations in life deserve our close scrutiny. And this is one.

Balkan War