ABSTRACT
A few years ago I was in Sarajevo, talking to a man who worked for the Office of the High Representative (OHR), the international protectorate responsible for governing Bosnia. This was around the time an initiative to integrate Bosnia’s armies into a single ministry was being debated, and I asked him how he knew that this policy-which was the OHR’s policy-was supported by the people of Bosnia. His answer was revealing: “I don’t worry about that. We’re here because of what happened at Srebrenica.” We all remember Srebrenica, of course: how Serb forces overran a UN enclave and in three days systematically slaughtered over 7,000 Muslims-the only confirmed genocide in Europe since the Second World War.1 Now this man was telling me that Srebrenica was why he and the whole international community (IC) were in Bosnia. But what exactly does Srebrenica tell us about reorganizing the national defense, developing a common tax policy or fighting corruption-in short, about governing Bosnia now?
