A familiar problem, in a familiar place, but now with the added prospect of Russian intervention. Thirty years after its horrific war, Bosnia is mired in a complex, volatile conflict involving ethnic divisions, religious rivalry, genocide denial, painful memories and the nagging suspicion that Moscow is stirring things up. The past haunts you in Bosnia. It is a country shaped by centuries of ethnic and religious segregation, and which is still struggling to deal with its own fractured identity. But it is the modern history that is so palpable – the various scars left behind by three and a half years of brutal war in the 1990s. There were 100,000 deaths in a country of just four million people. Some of these scars are surprisingly visible. We stop at an apartment building in Sarajevo, originally built for the 1984 Winter Olympics, and look at the high side wall – riddled with hundreds of holes. They range from small bullet holes to yawning gaps left by rockets and shells. But these can be repaired. Bosnia’s biggest problems are the lingering trauma, the dangerous tensions that continue to divide that country and the sense that it may be back on the road to destructive war. That nothing, really, has changed. To understand how visceral these sections are, we leave Sarajevo and drive for a few hours. Just before you reach the border with Serbia, you find the town of Srebrenica. It was here that more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serbs in July 1995. An act of almost unspeakable cruelty, led by Ratko Mladic. He assured the locals they would be safe and then ordered a shocking wave of violence, which began, scandalously, under the eyes of United Nations troops. There is a huge cemetery here now. A focal point to remember. What strikes you is the sheer number of graves here – and also the clusters of family members buried together – fathers and sons, all killed at the same time. Sehida Abdurakhmanovic knows pain. Her husband Jakube was killed in the first days of the war. Her brother, Meho, was murdered during the massacre and his remains were never found. Her 16-year-old son survived by escaping into the woods. “I didn’t realize what was going to happen,” he tells me. “I had no idea that genocide would happen, that a crime of this magnitude would happen. If I had known, I would have run for my life and saved my children from what was coming. I believed in civilization. I made a big mistake. “When I was thinking about my son, he said he never stopped thinking about us. We were lucky. He said he would kill himself if we died. My brother was never found and I never found his remains. I hope you find a bone to bury him – this would comfort me. So I could pray.” Survival guilt weighs heavily on many. Sehida’s son, like so many young people, left the country and started a new life abroad – out of his class of 44 students, only four survived. Ratko Mladic is now in prison, convicted of genocide. You might think that his name would be a stain in this country. that everyone will revile him. And you would be wrong. In the nearby town of Bratunac, we are led into a large room, rather like a chapel. Around the walls are hundreds of photographs of Bosnian Serbs killed in the war. “This is my cousin Augustus here,” says politician Vozin Pavlovic, as we walk together. “His head was cut off and he was kicked like a football. It was terrible.” Pavlovic believes the deaths of thousands of Muslims in Srebrenica – Europe’s worst massacre since the Holocaust – was not so bad. A crime, yes, but nothing more. That the man who ordered it is simply misunderstood. “I believe that Ratko Mladic is a hero and that he is not guilty of what he was accused of and convicted of,” Pavlovic tells me. There was no genocide in Srebrenica.” Image: Ratko Mladic For him, the legacy of the war is not about reconciliation, but about the creation and expansion of Republika Srpska. Complaining of being marginalized by Bosniaks, who make up about half the population, Republika Srpska says it wants to run its own affairs and even create its own army. To many people, this sounds a lot like the kind of rhetoric that led to war 30 years ago, but Pavlovich is clear in his mind: “There will be no peace in this area as long as the international community represents, defends and protects only The one side is the side of the Muslims.” Back in the capital, Ljubisa Cosic welcomes us to his office with a smile. The mayor of East Sarajevo has a new office that looks away. He likes to have big views. “The disintegration of Bosnia and Herzegovina will happen if this state continues like this,” he says. “Bosnians are always trying to have a centralized state. They want more and more. It’s not possible. We had a war because of that.” So could it happen again? Could Bosnia really slip back into conflict and division? The answer, worryingly, is a tentative “maybe”. If Republika Srpska ever decided to seek independence, it would need powerful supporters. As it happens, he already has a sense of kinship with Serbia, friendship with Russia. “Personally, I love the Russians more than the Americans,” Kosic says. “We have a very, very strong historical relationship with the Russians and we believe in Russia.” Pavlovic is even less ambiguous. “NATO is a criminal organization, comparable only to the Third Reich as a fascist organization,” he says with a shrug. The fear of many in western Europe is that Russia is looking for new places to foment unrest – to distract from what is happening in Ukraine and broaden European unity – and that Bosnia, with its divisions and instability, may she seems like the perfect candidate. Throughout history, the Balkans have often been a melting pot for violence. Few doubt that, if the spark is ignited, it could happen again.