The peace delivered to war-torn Bosnia 21 years ago today was deeply flawed. After the ethnically-driven war that lasted four years, left 100,000 dead and displaced millions, the new country is still divided. And the schisms are erupting again.

The town of Mihatovici is unique in Bosnia - it is home almost exclusively to the surviving women of Srebrenica.

"Every day I am angry," says 36-year-old Zinahida Masic, a Bosnian-Muslim who was resettled in Mihatovici after the war.

"No-one can ever pay for my brothers and my father, there isn't enough money in the world."

Ms Masic was 15 when she watched as the Bosnian-Serb Army of Radovan Karadzic descended on her hometown in July, 21 years ago.

She lost her father, and her five brothers aged between 24 and 35 were all murdered too.

Her father was the last of the six men she saw alive.

"I hung onto him until a soldier tore me away and threw me into a bus. Then I was all alone, I don't even have any photos of them anymore," she says.

Srebrenica was fatefully located in the east of the country and under the control of Serbs, who wanted it 'ethnically cleansed'.

All the women were separated and sent away, while 8,300 Muslim men and boys were killed. It was the largest act of genocide in Europe since World War II.

"Men were killed like dogs or birds. For the soldiers it was simply eat, drink, kill, sleep," explains Ms Masic.

Bosnian-Serb president Radovan Karadzic, whose forces carried out the massacre, was sentenced just this year, and faces 40 years imprisonment for war crimes. Another figure leading the massacre, general Ratko Mladic, is currently on trial for genocide and war crimes.

But the process of justice has not erased the distrust and pain many Bosnians carry with them.

"I can never trust a Serb again after seeing what they truly have inside them," Ms Masic states, as she hugs her 18-year-old daughter in their prefab UN-built house for refugees.

"It's in their blood you know."

Republika Srpska: across the divide

"Let's be straight about something, this isn't Bosnia. We're sitting in Republika Srpska now," proclaims Pedrag Klacar, 32, from a cafe in the city of Pale, 15 minutes north of Bosnia's capital, Sarajevo.

Ethnic Serbs like Mr Klacar mostly live in this largely autonomous region of the country established by Serb politicians amid war and ethnic cleansing, and cemented by the Dayton Peace Accord.

They revere the region's founder, convicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic. Simmering resentments fester.

"Bosnia is holding us back economically," Mr Klacar says.

"We pay Sarajevo taxes that we never see again, we would be much richer without them," he continues between espressos, as he laments the country's woeful economy.

Over 40 per cent of Bosnians live below the poverty line, GDP is shrinking, and roughly 70,000 fled last year as economic migrants.

They were escaping Bosnia's 42 per cent unemployment — with youth unemployment the highest in the world at 62 per cent.

All ethnicities share the bleak economics but it fuels tensions and resentment between them.

"Honestly, many Muslims in Bosnia are terrorists, so when I travel with a Bosnian passport people think I'm a terrorist too," Mr Klacar says, as his friends around the table nod in agreement.

Ever since the war ended, many Serbs have continued to want independence from Bosnia.

Breaking away was given a boost in September, when 99.7 per cent voted in favour of an annual holiday marking the founding of Srpska — despite the fact even holding a referendum on the question had been declared constitutionally illegal.

Many other Bosnians fear it was a vote of confidence for Srpska's President Milorad Dodik and his threatened 2018 referendum for full severance from Bosnia.

If Mr Dodik proceeds to redraw Balkan borders in defiance of state law and the international community, it risks violent conflict.

The desire for Serb independence is now dangerously divisive, and remains extremely popular in Srpska.

"One day, God willing, we will be independent. We should be," Mr Klacar says.

The failing state

In a smoke-filled Sarajevo cafe, Croat book editor and writer Ivana Krstanovic, 27, is describing the convoluted political system designed around wartime animosities.

"It's Byzantine, crazy, and it doesn't work," she says of the Dayton Accords that crippled Bosnia from the outset and enshrined ethnic separatism.

The ethnic majorities: Croatian (Catholic), Bosniak (Muslim), and Serb (Orthodox) each have a president that governs in an uneasy triumvirate. Croats and Bosniaks share the Republic of Bosnia-Herzigovina, and Republika Srpska is the autonomous entity for the Serbs. Jews, Gypsies and other minorities have no representation.

The ethnic majorities re-elect ethno-nationalists — this happened in October's municipal elections, when voters resoundingly voted only for their own ethnic parties.

Concepts of time and the idea of oblivion haunt much of Ivana's writing.

'Long have I walked this path, yet I don't fear the sun,' Ms Krstanovic writes in one poem — an aimless journey and persevering in the face of the unknown, an apt metaphor for life in Bosnia.

Like many who grew up in post-war Bosnia, she feels little bond with the modern country.

"I identify as a Croat, as a Catholic. The absurdity of the Dayton Agreement prevented the development of a nation with any political maturity or a strong civil society," she says.

"Social misery is on an unstoppable rise here and people condemned to that are easy prey for political manipulation."

Religious trinity

Bosnia's three major religions continue to be politicised and remain a nationalist identifier, embraced by citizens, to differentiate between Slavic Bosniaks, Croat and Serbs.

Just one spark

At Sarajevo's National Museum, tour guide 'Jelena' is torn by competing nationalist attempts to hijack history for their political ends.

"The recipe we had before the last war is the recipe we have right now, with three ethnicities playing with our history," she says wearily.

She points to the museum information guide as a micro- example of the intractable arguments, and how ungovernable the country is.

"Just making this map took months of negotiation. Legally we need consensus from all three ethnic groups to get our state funding. The Serbs refused the English translations for the room names, just to frustrate things," she says.

Fears of a new war have been raised from time to time by outsiders looking at Bosnia. Now its own citizens are beginning to raise the prospect.

An exasperated Jelena says: "Everywhere we are frozen by nationalists and I fear we again have an environment where just a spark can set off another catastrophe."

Harvest of hate

On his farm beside Sarajevo's airport 74-year-old Salim has seen both harvests and war — and he is sensing again the smell of conflict.

Twenty-five years ago, he risked his life assisting the war effort against the Serbs.

"For 15 days I helped dig a tunnel under my land, to get food into the city," he says of the secret tunnel he used to sneak aid into Sarajevo during its 1,425-day siege.

He's afraid of the rising tensions, and the entrenched ethnic divides the last war created.

"The three presidents of Bosnia are the cancer of this land. The people of this country are doomed to another war," he says.

Sharpening his scythe with a stone, he warns: "Grab a gun now. Not even a cat will survive this next one."

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