Bosniaks of Bosnia and Herzegovina

A Bosnian court on Oct. 30 sentenced a former Serb soldier to 20 years in prison for committing war crimes against Bosniak civilians during the 1992 Bosnian War.

Retired Canadian General, former UNPROFOR Commander in Sarajevo, Lewis MacKenzie, comes to Belgrade on the forthcoming Belgrade Book Fair, in order to promote Serbian edition of his book entitled: "Peacekeeper: The Road to Sarajevo", written 26 years ago, that was a bestseller in Canada.

Yet some experts, officials and diplomats say future elections are almost irrelevant while local leaders continue to block the system, playing their lose-lose games.

To make matters worse, Bosnia's unfolding political drama is increasingly intertwined with other regional and international disputes, especially with the tensions between Serbia and Kosovo.

They warn that years of political divisions, zero-sum games, distrust and poor communication between local leaders, as well as growing tensions among key regional and global actors, have left Bosnia a ticking time-bomb that could go off at any moment, leading to the collapse of the remaining joint institutions or even the breakup of the country.

Turbulence Ahead

The deep summer season is not yet over, but with Presidential elections due in November in Romania, political life is heating up. With the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE) having quit the Social Democratic Party (PSD) led government, the PSD now finds itself without an absolute majority in Parliament.

Turkey's Emin Alper won the Heart of Sarajevo award on Aug. 22 for best director at the 25th Sarajevo Film Festival in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Former detainees and family members of people killed in the Omarska detention camp near Prijedor in north-west Bosnia and Herzegovina will mark the 27th anniversary of the date considered as marking the beginning of the closure of the facility on August 6.

"I'm still looking for my father's remains, 27 years after he was killed. The last time I talked to him was over the phone on June 24, 1992. Two days later I called again. No one answered the phone," Milan Mandic, a pre-war resident of Sarajevo, told BIRN.

Until May 7, 1995, a significant amount of weapons were delivered to the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Srebrenica, which was then a demilitarized zone, by an air bridge, which was presented as exclusively humanitarian at the time, according to a confidential letter from the Bosnian Army Commander Rasim Delic, "Vecernje novosti" had insight in.

Emir Suljagic fell "hopelessly in love" with his first-ever girlfriend in the summer of 1992, when the place in which he lived at the time - Srebrenica - was under siege.

"I used to walk from Srebrenica to [the nearby village of] Potocari every second day to see her and spend some time with her. I did not mind going back at midnight or 1am during the war," he recalled.