'The criminal is caught and we leave the money on his account"

Or so declared Bosnian President Haris Silajdzic, in a recent interview. Amid everything that has happened in the region of ex-Yugoslavia -- Kosovo issuing new passports to its citizens, Karadzic making his first appearance before the Hague Tribunal without entering a plea so as to stonewall, and complaints from some Croatian groups about the evident pro-Ustasha sympathies of a Croatian rock star -- Bosnia remains a sideshow.

In November 1995, the Dayton agreement officially ended the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and brought the official leaders of all its warring factions to the bargaining table. A new constitution was drafted, and the de facto partition that had ensued during the war became an entrenched reality. As Bosnia currently stands, it is divided into two rough halves: something called 'Republika Srpska,' and the Muslim-Croat 'Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina.' It corresponds, give or take, to the respective ethnic make-up of each entity.

Bosnia's President, mixing hope with reality, declared in this interview what many analysts and watchers of the region had noticed all along, but which have been given a new kick-start with Kosovo's declaration of independence back in February. While Bosnia is at peace, barring the divisions among Bosniaks and Croats, as well as of both in relation to Bosnia's Serbs, vicious undertones are at work.

"Bosnia is in peace exactly because that project succeeded. Hundreds of thousands of -- at least half a million -- people are outside their own country because they have been ethnically cleansed, they're not there, because they were forced to get out under the threat of death. Our constitutional arrangement is such that actually it rewards the aggression and genocide and ethnic cleansing and so on."

Partition, whether it be supervised or unilateral, appears to be on the table now, though no one is saying it outright. Taking Kosovo's example, which was a culmination of several ground-level realities that made it a state in everything but name, this becomes all the more apparent.

Peter Galbraith, just as a comparison, has argued a similar trend has happened in post-invasion Iraq, whereby the country is now essentially divided up into three factions/mini-states, a reality that the next American President will have to take into account so as to enact a gradual withdrawal from the country.

Way back, in the aftermath of Dayton, Bosnia's future looked troubled and uncertain; nothing has changed for the better since then, and I would bet that Balkan borders, even after Kosovo, may well still be anything but permanent. That the "great powers" of this new century are doing little, if anything, about this -- though, to be fair, just what can they do? -- makes it all the more frustrating and tragic.

It will, on a humorous note, keep Balkan watchers in business for the foreseeable future.