The three-year Bosnian war (1992-95), the worst genocidal conflict the world has witnessed, continues to haunt and divide the region even after the lapse of two decades. Instead of throwing up a durable solution, the conflict has only further sharpened the ethnic and sectarian cleavages that had caused the war in the first place. The ethnic divisions remain the same, with the Serbs, Croats and Muslims now sharing an unstable state ruled by quotas based on ethnicity. Yugoslavia’s founder and ruler for 35 years, Josip Broz Tito’s towering personality and the communist ideology were the potent glue that had held the multi-ethnic state together. However, with the death of Tito and the unraveling of communism, disintegration was the only the logical outcome. Kosovo, a province of Serbia, sought NATO’s intervention to acquire statehood. The immensity of the genocide during the Bosnian war was simply appalling, with the Sarajevo siege lasting for 11,825 days (44 months), which has been called the longest siege in modern history. On April 4, 1992, some 40,000 people from all over the country — Muslims, Serbs and Croats — had streamed into the square to demand peace from squabbling politicians. Being a dominant group, the Serb nationalists, helped by neighbouring Serbia, had triggered the war based on ethnic cleansing. The siege of Srebrenica had allowed the Serbs to overrun and capture as much as 70 percent of Bosnia. Meanwhile, Bosniaks and Croats who had started off as allies turned on each other, precipitating a three-pronged conflict, which took over 100,000 lives, rendering half the population homeless and leaving the country divided into enclaves. As truth is the first casualty in a war, we need to take the official version with caution, as this may not be the exact depiction of what had transpired on the ground. As things stand today, the three mini-states, juxtaposed in uneasy proximity, have become a major cause of their isolation. It appears that adversity may at last become the glue to hold the country together. Bosnia holds a valuable lesson for many countries. *