Editorials: Bosnia
BOSNIA The Bosnian national elections of September 14 did not raise great expectations. And rightly so. They confirm the power of the most nationalistic elements among Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians,...
...But still the "national" election took place...
...Winnicott, the English child psychiatrist, coined the phrase "good-enough mothering" to reassure ordinary women that they were capable mothers even when their performance did not achieve the heights set by child-rearing "experts...
...A modest expectation, but good enough.h...
...Yes, NATO troops are there, and there they should remain until enough ordinary people have picked up their lives, and life itself has become more normal, and more peaceful...
...However modest an event, this is better than the slaughter of a year ago...
...They confirm the power of the most nationalistic elements among Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians, which is to say among those least inclined to work at fostering any multi-ethnic Bosnian state...
...Yet there is at least a cessation of rape, pillage, and ethnic cleansing, and here and there forms of civil society are returning...
...Local elections were postponed pending a normalization of the voting process, that is, of finding a means to allow refugees to return to their "home" towns, villages, and cities to cast their ballots for local officials...
...Good-enough peacemaking" is what we have in Bosnia...
...D.W...
...It is not up to the standards peacemaking experts set forth, even in the limited Dayton Accords...
Vol. 123 • September 1996 • No. 16
